Heavy Vector Partners of the Light Composite Higgs

Abstract

If the Higgs boson $H(125)$ is a composite due to new strong interactions at high energy, it has spin-one partners, ${\rho }_H$ and $a_H$, analogous to the $\rho$ and $a_1$ mesons of QCD. These bosons are heavy, their mass determined by the strong interaction scale. The strongly interacting particles light enough for ${\rho }_H$ and $a_H$ to decay to are the longitudinal weak bosons $V_L=W_L,Z_L$ and the Higgs boson $H$. These decay signatures are consistent with resonant diboson excesses recently reported near 2 TeV by ATLAS and CMS. We calculate $\sigma \times BR({\rho }_H\to VV)=$ few fb and $\sigma \times BR(a_H\to VH)=$ 0.5-1 fb at $\sqrt{s}=$ 8 TeV, increasing by a factor of 5-7 at 13 TeV. Other tests of the hypothesis of the strong-interaction nature of the diboson resonances are suggested.

Comments: Improved discussion of Drell-Yan production; 11 pages, 2 tables, no figures; version to appear in Physics Letters B