Little Higgs after the little one

TL;DR

This paper investigates the discovery potential of the Littlest Higgs Model with T-parity at the LHC, analyzing various production channels, backgrounds, and the feasibility of identifying signals through specific final states and b-jet reconstruction.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive simulation-based analysis of signal and background for the Littlest Higgs Model with T-parity at the LHC, including strategies for detection and Higgs reconstruction.

Findings

Associated production can be as important as pair-production for certain mass hierarchies.

Full detector level simulation shows promising discovery potential at current and future LHC runs.

Reconstruction of b-jets at the Higgs mass offers a clear signature for the model.

Abstract

At the LHC, the Littlest Higgs Model with $T$-parity is characterised by various production channels. If the $T$-odd quarks are heavier than the exotic partners of the $W$ and the $Z$, then associated production can be as important as the pair-production of the former. Studying both, we look for final states comprising at least one lepton, jets and missing transverse energy. We consider all the SM processes that could conspire to contribute as background to our signals, and perform a full detector level simulation of the signal and background to estimate the discovery potential at the current run as well as at the scheduled upgrade of the LHC. We also show that, for one of the channels, the reconstruction of two tagged $b$-jets at the Higgs mass $(M_h = 125~{\rm GeV})$ provides us with an unambiguous hint for this model.