Same-Sign Dileptons from Colored Scalars in the Flavorful Top-Coloron Model

TL;DR

This paper investigates the production and decay of colored scalars in the flavorful Top-Coloron model, focusing on their signatures at colliders and deriving experimental bounds from LHC and Tevatron data.

Contribution

It provides a detailed phenomenological analysis of color-octet and color-singlet scalars, including new bounds on their masses and potential discovery channels at colliders.

Findings

LHC sets a lower mass limit of 440 GeV for color-octet scalars decaying to same-sign top quarks.

Tevatron excludes color-octet scalar masses from 50 to 125 GeV when lighter than the top.

Color-singlet pseudoscalars are challenging to detect at 8 TeV but could be discovered at 14 TeV through decay channels involving color-octet vector bosons.

Abstract

In this paper we study the phenomenology of color-octet and color-singlet scalars in the flavorful Top-Coloron model. We discuss the relevant production mechanisms at hadron colliders and the dominant decay modes, highlighting the most promising signatures for discovery, and derive bounds on the masses of the new scalars from LHC and Tevatron data. Of particular interest is the case in which color-octet scalars are pair produced and each decay to t cbar or tbar c, leading to a same-sign-dilepton final state. LHC data places a lower limit of 440 GeV on the octet mass in this scenario. The case of an octet lighter than the top, where the octet only decays into jets, has been tested by the Tevatron, which excludes the mass region from 50 to 125 GeV. The 8 TeV LHC is not yet sensitive to the observation of the color-singlet states, which are produced at rates much smaller than the octets. Nevertheless, the color-singlet pseudoscalar can be discovered at the 14 TeV LHC by analyzing the channel where it is produced from the decay of a color-octet vector boson.