Discovering Technicolor

TL;DR

This paper introduces Technicolor models where the Higgs boson is composite, discussing their theoretical foundations, experimental signals, and how they can be tested at the Large Hadron Collider.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive pedagogical overview of Technicolor models, including their construction, phenomenology, and experimental benchmarks for collider searches.

Findings

Comparison with electroweak precision data

Predicted signatures at the LHC

Framework for discovering Technicolor models

Abstract

We provide a pedagogical introduction to extensions of the Standard Model in which the Higgs is composite. These extensions are known as models of dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking or, in brief, Technicolor. Material covered includes: motivations for Technicolor, the construction of underlying gauge theories leading to minimal models of Technicolor, the comparison with electroweak precision data, the low energy effective theory, the spectrum of the states common to most of the Technicolor models, the decays of the composite particles and the experimental signals at the Large Hadron Collider. The level of the presentation is aimed at readers familiar with the Standard Model but who have little or no prior exposure to Technicolor. Several extensions of the Standard Model featuring a composite Higgs can be reduced to the effective Lagrangian introduced in the text. We establish the relevant experimental benchmarks for Vanilla, Running, Walking, and Custodial Technicolor, and a natural fourth family of leptons, by laying out the framework to discover these models at the Large Hadron Collider.