Searching for a dilaton decaying to muon pairs at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential to discover or exclude a light dilaton decaying into muon pairs at the LHC, focusing on models with conformal symmetry breaking and analyzing the impact of Yukawa coupling shifts.

Contribution

It presents a detailed analysis of dilaton production via vector boson fusion and assesses the discovery prospects at the LHC considering Yukawa coupling variations.

Findings

Potential for dilaton discovery at 100 fb-1 luminosity

Extended exclusion limits beyond Tevatron constraints

Promising search channel in muon decay mode

Abstract

We analyze the decays to muons of a light dilaton produced via vector boson fusion at the LHC. We investigate models in which the electroweak symmetry breaking is triggered by a spontaneously broken, approximately conformal sector. Taking into account the possibility of shifts in the dilaton Yukawa couplings to muons, we find a rather promising scenario for the conformal model search in the channel, with the possibility for a dilaton discovery at a delivered luminosity of 100 fb-1 at the LHC or, alternatively, for an extension of the exclusion zone in the model parameter space, until now fixed by the Tevatron.