Di-boson signatures as Standard Candles for Partial Compositeness

Abstract

Composite Higgs Models are often constructed including fermionic top partners with a mass around the TeV scale, with the top partners playing the role of stabilizing the Higgs potential and enforcing partial compositeness for the top quark. A class of models of this kind can be formulated in terms of fermionic strongly coupled gauge theories. A common feature they all share is the presence of specific additional scalar resonances, namely two neutral singlets and a colored octet, described by a simple effective Lagrangian. We study the phenomenology of these scalars, both in a model independent and model dependent way, including the bounds from all the available searches in the relevant channels with di-boson and di-top final states. We develop a generic framework which can be used to constrain any model containing pseudo-scalar singlets or octets. Using it, we find that such signatures provide strong bounds on the compositeness scale complementary to the traditional EWPT and Higgs couplings deviations. In many cases a relatively light scalar can be on the verge of discovery as a first sign of new physics.

Comments: 75 pages, 16 figures; version matches the published article. v3: Sign of C_t in Appendix C in Eqs. (C1, C7, C9) corrected. Analysis, results and conclusions of the main article are unchanged