Color Octet Scalar Production at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper calculates the production rate of color octet scalars at the LHC within the minimal flavor violation framework, highlighting the significance of one-loop gluon fusion processes and electroweak constraints on their observability.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed computation of one-loop gluon fusion production of color octet scalars and assesses electroweak constraints on their parameters.

Findings

One-loop gluon fusion can dominate pair production for ~TeV scalars.

Electroweak Z decay constraints limit scalar mass and Yukawa couplings.

Single scalar production rates can be significant at the LHC.

Abstract

New physics at the weak scale that can couple to quarks typically gives rise to unacceptably large flavor changing neutral currents. An attractive way to avoid this problem is to impose the principal of minimal flavor violation (MFV). Recently it was noted that in MFV only scalars with the same gauge quantum numbers as the standard model Higgs doublet or color octet scalars with the same weak quantum numbers as the Higgs doublet can couple to quarks. In this paper we compute the one-loop rate for production of a single color octet scalar through gluon fusion at the LHC, which can become greater than the tree level pair production rate for octet scalar masses around a TeV. We also calculate the precision electroweak constraint from Z decays to a b and anti-b quark; this constraint on color octet mass and Yukawa coupling affects the allowed range for single octet scalar production through gluon fusion.