NLO QCD corrections to the resonant Vector Diquark production at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper calculates the next-to-leading order QCD corrections for the production of vector diquarks at the LHC, improving the accuracy of cross section predictions and updating experimental search limits.

Contribution

It provides the first full analytic NLO QCD calculation for vector diquark production and decay at the LHC, including numerical analysis of scale uncertainties.

Findings

NLO corrections significantly reduce theoretical scale uncertainties.

Updated limits on vector diquark mass and couplings from LHC dijet data.

NLO effects can alter the expected search sensitivities.

Abstract

With the upcoming run of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at much higher center of mass energies, the search for Beyond Standard Model (BSM) physics will again take center stage. New colored particles predicted in many BSM scenarios are expected to be produced with large cross sections thus making them interesting prospects as a doorway to hints of new physics. We consider the resonant production of such a colored particle, the diquark, a particle having the quantum number of two quarks. The diquark can be either a scalar or vector. We focus on the vector diquark which has much larger production cross section compared to the scalar ones. In this work we calculate the next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD corrections to the on-shell vector diquark production at the LHC produced through the fusion of two quarks as well as the NLO corrections to its decay width. We present full analytic results for the one-loop NLO calculation and do a numerical study to show that the NLO corrections can reduce the scale uncertainties in the cross sections which can be appreciable and therefore modify the expected search limits for such particles. We also use the dijet result from LHC to obtain current limits on the mass and coupling strengths of the vector diquarks.