Discrete Goldstone Bosons

by Rachel Houtz (IPPP Durham)

Thursday 25 Aug 2022, 13:30 → 14:30 Europe/Zurich

4/3-006 - TH Conference Room (CERN)

In this talk, I will discuss discrete Goldstone bosons (dGB's), light particles arising from spontaneously broken exact discrete symmetries. These dGB's are guaranteed to have nonzero masses, while the associated discrete symmetry protects them from quadratically divergent mass contributions. The nonzero masses of dGB's arise directly from the discrete symmetry, without requiring an explicit symmetry breaking mechanism, setting dGB's apart from other pseudo-Goldstone bosons. After explaining the mass protection mechanism, I will discuss the generic experimental signals of dGB's. Below the spontaneous symmetry breaking scale, typically a preserved subset of the discrete symmetry remains, leading to a telltale signal of degenerate dGB's being produced simultaneously. Moreover, ratios of multi-scalar production amplitudes give a probe of the full UV discrete symmetry.