Dijet spectrum in nonlocal and asymptotically nonlocal theories

TL;DR

This paper extends asymptotically nonlocal theories to QCD, deriving Feynman rules and calculating dijet production cross sections to set bounds on new physics scales using collider data.

Contribution

It introduces an asymptotically nonlocal QCD model and computes relevant collider cross sections for phenomenological analysis.

Findings

Derived Feynman rules for asymptotically nonlocal QCD

Calculated leading-order dijet cross sections

Set bounds on nonlocal scale from LHC data

Abstract

Asymptotically nonlocal field theories approximate ghost-free nonlocal theories at low energies, yet are theories of finite order in the number of derivatives. These theories have an emergent nonlocal scale that regulates loop diagrams and can provide a solution to the hierarchy problem. Asymptotic nonlocality has been studied previously in scalar theories, Abelian and non-Abelian gauge theories with complex scalars, and linearized gravity. Here we extend that work by considering an asymptotically nonlocal generalization of QCD, which can be used for realistic phenomenological investigations. In particular, we derive Feynman rules relevant for the study of the production of dijets at hadron colliders and compute the parton-level cross sections at leading order. We use these to determine a bound on the scale of new physics from Large Hadron Collider data, both for a typical choice of model parameters, and in the nonlocal limit.