LHC Signatures of a Vector-like b'

TL;DR

This paper investigates the Large Hadron Collider signatures of a hypothetical heavy vector-like b' quark, focusing on its unique decay channels and mixing effects, especially within warped-space models.

Contribution

It provides a largely model-independent analysis of b' phenomenology, highlighting distinguishing features from chiral b' and exploring decay modes relevant for collider detection.

Findings

b' can decay into t W, b Z, and b h final states

b' exhibits distinctive signatures due to b <-> b' mixing

Analysis applicable to warped-space models with custodial symmetry

Abstract

Many beyond the standard model extensions predict the existence of heavy vector-like fermions. We study the LHC signatures of one such heavy vector-like fermion, called b', with electromagnetic charge -1/3 like the SM b-quark, but which could generically have different SU(2)_L and U(1)_Y quantum numbers. Our emphasis will be on the phenomenology due to b <-> b' mass-mixing, present after electroweak symmetry breaking. We focus on aspects which distinguish a vector-like b' from a chiral b' and include tree-level decays of the b' into t W, b Z and b h final states. While our analysis is largely model-independent, we take as a motivating example warped-space models in which a vector-like b' appears as the custodial partner of the top-quark.