Cornering diphoton resonance models at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper assesses the high luminosity LHC's potential to test various models explaining the 750 GeV diphoton excess, focusing on scalar couplings to gauge bosons, quarks, and dark matter, with different data requirements.

Contribution

It demonstrates the LHC's capability to probe a broad class of diphoton models, including dark sector portals, using correlated search channels and varying luminosity levels.

Findings

LHC can test many diphoton models with 3000 fb^{-1} of data.

Dark sector portal models can be constrained with as little as 30 fb^{-1}.

Inclusion of gluon and photon fusion enhances search sensitivity.

Abstract

We explore the ability of the high luminosity LHC to test models which can explain the 750 GeV diphoton excess. We focus on a wide class of models where a 750 GeV singlet scalar couples to Standard Model gauge bosons and quarks, as well as dark matter. Including both gluon and photon fusion production mechanisms, we show that LHC searches in channels correlated with the diphoton signal will be able to probe wide classes of diphoton models with $\mathcal{L} \sim 3000\, \text{fb}^{-1}$ of data. Furthermore, models in which the scalar is a portal to the dark sector can be cornered with as little as $\mathcal{L} \sim 30\, \text{fb}^{-1}$.