Probing colored particles with photons, leptons, and jets

• Published in: The journal of high energy physics Vol. 2012; no. 11
• Main Authors: Kats, Yevgeny, Strassler, Matthew J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer-Verlag 01.11.2012; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Atoms & subatomic particles; Charged particles; Classical and Quantum Gravitation; Elementary Particles; High energy physics; Large Hadron Collider; Leptons; Pair production; Particle decay; Photons; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Quantum chromodynamics; Quantum Field Theories; Quantum Field Theory; Quantum numbers; Quantum Physics; Relativity Theory; Searching; String Theory; Heavy Quark Physics; Beyond Standard Model; QCD
• ISSN: 1029-8479; 1029-8479
• DOI: 10.1007/JHEP11(2012)097

A bstract If pairs of new colored particles are produced at the Large Hadron Collider, determining their quantum numbers, and even discovering them, can be non-trivial. We suggest that valuable information can be obtained by measuring the resonant signals of their near-threshold QCD bound states. If the particles are charged, the resulting signatures include photons and leptons and are sufficiently rich for unambiguously determining their various quantum numbers, including the charge, color representation and spin, and obtaining a precise mass measurement. These signals provide well-motivated benchmark models for resonance searches in the dijet, photon+jet, diphoton and dilepton channels. While these measurements require that the lifetime of the new particles be not too short, the resulting limits, unlike those from direct searches for pair production above threshold, do not depend on the particles’ decay modes. These limits may be competitive with more direct searches if the particles decay in an obscure way.