Speaker
Description
Dark showers arising from the Higgs coupling to a strongly confined dark
sector present a unique avenue for exploring new physics signatures.
Within the FCC-ee framework, this model is being studied,
highlighting the production of semi-visible jets (SVJs) enriched with
photons and leptons. These signatures, featuring displaced decays and
complex jet structures, demand tailored reconstruction techniques and
novel targeted analyses.
We aim to adapt this model for the LHC, leveraging vector boson fusion
production of the Higgs, which couples to dark quarks and subsequently
hadronizes into dark mesons. Standard jet identification at the LHC may fail
to capture such photon-enriched and lepton-enriched SVJs, necessitating
the development of new algorithms relying on jet substructure.
Key challenges include understanding how Standard Model (SM) analyses,
such as those targeting the Higgs-to-b-quark decay channel, overlap with
or constrain these novel signatures. While $H\to bb$ acts as a background,
assessing the sensitivity of SM analyses to dark sector scenarios or
highlighting their limitations in identifying photon- and lepton-enriched
SVJs is central to our exploration.
This work will focus on developing new analysis strategies tailored to the
LHC environment, where existing detector capabilities and triggers may
already offer opportunities to probe this signature. By uncovering an
unexplored parameter space, particularly in the low-mass regime around
the Higgs scale, we aim to refine the methods for identifying dark sector
signatures and enhance sensitivity to new physics within Higgs portal
frameworks.
