New physics in triboson event topologies

TL;DR

This paper investigates the potential to detect new physics involving three electroweak bosons at the LHC, focusing on models with an exotic scalar decaying into gauge bosons, and estimates the experimental sensitivity.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis framework for probing exotic scalar fields coupled to electroweak bosons in triboson events at the LHC.

Findings

Sensitivity to cross sections as low as 0.5 fb

Potential to discover scalars with masses between 500 GeV and 2 TeV

Effective operator coefficients up to 35 TeV

Abstract

We present a study of the sensitivity to models of new physics of proton collisions resulting in three electroweak bosons. As a benchmark, we analyze models in which an exotic scalar field $\phi$ is produced in association with a gauge boson ($V=\gamma$ or $Z$). The scalar then decays to a pair of bosons, giving the process $pp\rightarrow \phi V\rightarrow V'V"V$. We interpret our results in a set of effective field theories where the exotic scalar fields couple to the Standard Model through pairs of electroweak gauge bosons. We estimate the sensitivity of the LHC and HL-LHC datasets and find sensitivity to cross sections in the 10 fb -- 0.5 fb range, corresponding to scalar masses of 500 GeV to 2 TeV and effective operator coefficients up to 35 TeV.