Electroweak-Charged Bound States as LHC Probes of Hidden Forces

TL;DR

This paper investigates how LHC experiments can detect hidden sector particles connected via electroweak-charged mediators, focusing on bound states and resonant signals to probe new strong forces beyond the Standard Model.

Contribution

It introduces novel search strategies for electroweak-charged bound states and hidden forces at the LHC, including extensions of existing diboson searches and new long-lived particle searches.

Findings

Resonant signals can be reconstructed to reveal hidden sector properties.

Existing diboson searches can be extended to detect these new states.

Proposed methods effectively probe models like SUSY and Twin Higgs extensions.

Abstract

We explore the LHC reach on beyond-the-Standard Model (BSM) particles $X$ associated with a new strong force in a hidden sector. We focus on the motivated scenario where the SM and hidden sectors are connected by fermionic mediators $\psi^{+, 0}$ that carry SM electroweak charges. The most promising signal is the Drell-Yan production of a $\psi^\pm \bar{\psi}^0$ pair, which forms an electrically charged vector bound state $\Upsilon^\pm$ due to the hidden force and later undergoes resonant annihilation into $W^\pm X$. We analyze this final state in detail in the cases where $X$ is a real scalar $\phi$ that decays to $b\bar{b}$, or a dark photon $\gamma_d$ that decays to dileptons. For prompt $X$ decays, we show that the corresponding signatures can be efficiently probed by extending the existing ATLAS and CMS diboson searches to include heavy resonance decays into BSM particles. For long-lived $X$, we propose new searches where the requirement of a prompt hard lepton originating from the $W$ boson ensures triggering and essentially removes any SM backgrounds. To illustrate the potential of our results, we interpret them within two explicit models that contain strong hidden forces and electroweak-charged mediators, namely $\lambda$-supersymmetry (SUSY) and non-SUSY ultraviolet extensions of the Twin Higgs model. The resonant nature of the signals allows for the reconstruction of the mass of both $\Upsilon^\pm$ and $X$, thus providing a wealth of information about the hidden sector.