Collider production of Electroweak resonances from photon-photon states

TL;DR

This paper estimates the production cross sections of electroweak resonances from photon-photon scattering in collider environments, finding very small cross sections that challenge future detection efforts.

Contribution

It introduces a method to estimate electroweak resonance production via gamma-gamma scattering using unitarized Higgs EFT amplitudes in collider scenarios.

Findings

Spin-0 resonance around 1.5 TeV with cross section ~0.01 fb/TeV^4 at LHC.

Spin-2 resonance around 2 TeV with a 100-fold suppression in cross section.

Photon-photon processes are too rare for immediate detection despite their cleanliness.

Abstract

We estimate production cross sections for 2-body resonances of the Electroweak Symmetry Breaking sector (in $W_LW_L$ and $Z_LZ_L$ rescattering) from $\gamma\gamma$ scattering. We employ unitarized Higgs Effective Field Theory amplitudes previously computed coupling the two photon channel to the EWSBS. We work in the Effective Photon Approximation and examine both $e^-e^+$ collisions at energies of order 1-2 TeV (as relevant for future lepton machines) and $pp$ collisions at LHC energies. Dynamically generating a spin-0 resonance around 1.5 TeV (by appropriately choosing the parameters of the effective theory) we find that the differential cross section per unit $s$, $p_t^2$ is of order 0.01 fbarn/TeV$^4$ at the LHC. Injecting a spin-2 resonance around 2 TeV we find an additional factor 100 suppression for $p_t$ up to 200 GeV. The very small cross sections put these $\gamma\gamma$ processes, though very clean, out of reach of immediate future searches.