Cornering sgluons with four-top-quark events

TL;DR

This paper investigates the potential to detect sgluons, hypothetical scalar particles, through four-top-quark events at the LHC, constraining their mass and proposing improvements for future searches.

Contribution

It reinterprets existing four-top-quark search results to set new limits on sgluon masses and suggests modifications to enhance detection prospects.

Findings

Sgluon mass constrained to be above 1.06 TeV

Reinterpretation of four-top-quark data for sgluon searches

Proposed modifications could improve future detection sensitivity

Abstract

The existence of colour-octet scalar states, often dubbed sgluons, is predicted in many extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics, such as supersymmetric realisations featuring Dirac gauginos. Such states have a large pair-production rate at hadron colliders and mainly decay into pairs of jets and top quarks. Consequently, they represent a primary target for experimental searches for new resonances in the multijet and multitop channels at the Large Hadron Collider. Adopting a phenomenologically-motivated simplified model, we reinterpret the results of a recent experimental search for the four-top-quark Standard Model signal, from which we constrain the sgluon mass to be larger than about 1.06 TeV. We additionally consider how modifications of the existing four-top-quark studies could enhance our ability to unravel the presence of scalar octets in data.