Anomalous production of massive gauge boson pairs at muon colliders

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the potential of high-energy muon colliders to detect anomalous gauge boson pair production, setting constraints on new physics models through simulated collision events.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed simulation-based analysis of anomalous gauge boson production at muon colliders, constraining new physics using effective field theory and Higgs boson decay channels.

Findings

Constraints on quartic vector boson interactions established.

Limits on heavy Higgs boson production via vector boson fusion derived.

Potential sensitivity of muon colliders to new physics demonstrated.

Abstract

The prospects of searches for anomalous production of hadronically decaying weak boson pairs at proposed high-energy muon colliders are reported. Muon-muon collision events are simulated at $\sqrt{s}=6$, 10, and 30 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of $4$, $10$, and $10$ ab$^{-1}$, respectively. Simulated $\mu\mu\rightarrow\mathrm{W}\mathrm{W}+\nu\nu/\mu\mu$ events are used to set expected constraints on the structure of quartic vector boson interactions in the framework of a dimension-8 effective field theory. Similarly, $\mu\mu\rightarrow\mathrm{W}\mathrm{W}/\mathrm{Z}\mathrm{Z}+\nu\nu$ events are used to report constraints on the product of the cross section and branching fraction for vector boson fusion production of a heavy neutral Higgs boson decaying to weak boson pairs. These results are interpreted in the context of the Georgi-Machacek model.