Transversal Modes and Higgs Bosons in Electroweak Vector-Boson Scattering at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper explores how transversally polarized gauge bosons affect vector-boson scattering at the LHC, providing a framework to interpret potential deviations from the Standard Model and emphasizing the importance of unitarity constraints.

Contribution

It introduces a simplified model framework that includes transversally polarized gauge bosons and analyzes their impact on LHC vector-boson scattering results, extending beyond longitudinal scattering.

Findings

Unitarity constraints are crucial and model-dependent for parameter limits.

Transversally polarized bosons significantly influence scattering processes.

The approach aids in interpreting LHC data on vector-boson scattering and Higgs production.

Abstract

Processes where $W$ and $Z$ bosons scatter into pairs of electroweak bosons $W$, $Z$, and Higgs, are sensitive probes of new physics in the electroweak sector. We study simplified models that describe typical scenarios of new physics and parameterize the range of possible LHC results between the Standard-Model prediction and unitarity limits. Extending the study beyond purely longitudinal scattering, we investigate the role of transversally polarized gauge bosons. Unitarity becomes an essential factor, and limits on parameters matched to the naive perturbative low-energy effective theory turn out to be necessarily model-dependent. We discuss the implications of our approach for the interpretation of LHC data on vector-boson scattering and Higgs-pair production.