Searching for New Physics in Scalar Top-Pair Resonance

TL;DR

This paper investigates how new scalar particles produced via gluon fusion decay into top quark pairs, analyzing interference effects with the background and how new physics can alter observable signals at the LHC.

Contribution

It revisits interference effects in scalar resonance production, highlighting how additional vector-like quarks can significantly change the expected line-shape in top pair mass distributions.

Findings

Interference with SM fermions causes a dip in the mass distribution.

Additional vector-like quarks can distort the resonance line-shape.

Current LHC data constrains models with such new physics.

Abstract

We consider the effects in the production via gluon fusion in LHC collisions of one or two spin-zero new resonant particles $\Phi$ that decay into a top quark pair. We revisit previous analyses of the interferences between the heavy-fermion loop-induced $gg \rightarrow \Phi \rightarrow t\bar{t}$ signal and the continuum QCD background $gg \rightarrow t\bar{t}$. We show that in the presence of standard model fermions only in the $gg \rightarrow \Phi$ loops, the interference effect is destructive causing a dip in the $t \bar t$ mass distribution. Including New Physics such as additional vector-like quarks leads to a totally different picture as the line-shape can be distorted by peaks and dips. For the time being, the absence of such effects in ATLAS and CMS data constrain models of the production and decays of the $\Phi$ state(s).