In this paper we investigate the next-to-minimal composite Higgs model with a SO(6)/SO(5) coset, whose pNGB sector includes a Standard Model singlet in addition to the usual Higgs doublet. The fermions are embedded in the representation 6 of SO(6). We study the region of parameter space of the model where the radiatively generated potential has global minima with both the doublet and the singlet fields developing vacuum expectation values. We investigate the consequences of kinetic and mass mixing between the Higgs and the singlet scalar that arise in this framework. We demonstrate that the ensuing doublet-singlet mixing can provide a handle to accommodate heavier resonances (top-partners) for a given compositeness scale as compared to the minimal composite Higgs model, thus relaxing the tension with the direct LHC bounds. The main phenomenological consequence of this is a sizable deviation of the Higgs couplings from the Standard Model predictions. While the present experimental precision in the measurement of the Higgs couplings still allows for considerable release of this tension, future measurements of the Higgs branching ratios with increased precision would lead to stringent constraints on this setup.

We show for the first time that the loop-driven kinetic mixing between visible and dark Abelian gauge bosons can facilitate dark matter production in the early Universe by creating a 'dynamic' portal, which depends on the energy of the process. The required smallness of the strength of the portal interaction, suited for freeze-in, is justified by a suppression arising from the mass of a heavy vector-like fermion. The strong temperature sensitivity associated with the interaction is responsible for most of the dark matter production during the early stages of reheating.

We systematically study the modifications in the couplings of the Higgs boson, when identified as a pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson of a strong sector, in the light of LHC Run 1 and Run 2 data. For the minimal coset SO(5)/SO(4) of the strong sector, we focus on scenarios where the standard model left-and right-handed fermions (specifically, the top and bottom quarks) are either in 5 or in the symmetric 14 representation of SO(5). Going beyond the minimal 5 L − 5 R representation, to what we call here the 'extended' models, we observe that it is possible to construct more than one invariant in the Yukawa sector. In such models, the Yukawa couplings of the 125 GeV Higgs boson undergo nontrivial modifications. The pattern of such modifications can be encoded in a generic phenomenological Lagrangian which applies to a wide class of such models. We show that the presence of more than one Yukawa invariant allows the gauge and Yukawa coupling modifiers to be decorrelated in the 'extended' models, and this decorrelation leads to a relaxation of the bound on the compositeness scale (f ≥ 640 GeV at 95% CL, as compared to f ≥ 1 TeV for the minimal 5 L − 5 R representation model). We also study the Yukawa coupling modifications in the context of the next-to-minimal strong sector coset SO(6)/SO(5) for fermion-embedding up to representations of dimension 20. While quantifying our observations, we have performed a detailed χ 2 fit using the ATLAS and CMS combined Run 1 and available Run 2 data.

In this paper we present an augmented version of the Abelian scalar clockwork model to generate geometrically suppressed vacuum expectation values (vev) of the pseudo Nambu-Goldstone bosons, that we call the clockworked vevs. We briefly comment on generalization of the setup and possible 5D UV realizations. We demonstrate how tiny neutrino mass can be generated by clockworking a weak scale vev.

We study the effects of including Yukawa-like dimension-5 operators in the Georgi-Machacek model where the Standard Model is augmented with triplet scalars. We focus only on the charged Higgs sector and investigate the constraints arising from radiative B-meson decays, neutral B-meson mixing and precision measurement of Zbb vertex. We observe that the inclusion of the dimension-5 operators causes substantial alteration of the limits on the charged Higgs masses and the vacuum expectation value of the triplets, derived otherwise using only the dimension-4 operators.

We study the impact of an alternate cosmological history with an early matter-dominated epoch on the freeze-in production of dark matter. Such early matter domination is triggered by a meta-stable matter field dissipating into radiation. In general, the dissipation rate has a non-trivial temperature and scale factor dependence. Compared to the usual case of dark matter production via the freeze-in mechanism in a radiation-dominated universe, in this scenario, orders of magnitude larger coupling between the visible and the dark sector can be accommodated. Finally, as a proof of principle, we consider a specific model where the dark matter is produced by a sub-GeV dark photon having a kinetic mixing with the Standard Model photon. We point out that the parameter space of this model can be probed by the experiments in the presence of an early matter-dominated era.

No abstract

Composite Higgs models, together with partial compositeness, predict the existence of new scalars and vector-like quarks (partners) at and above the TeV scale. Generically, the presence of these additional scalars opens up new decay topologies for the partners. In this paper we show how to systematically construct the general low energy Lagrangian to capture this feature. We emphasize the specific pattern in the top-partner spectrum arising in this class of models. We then present a concrete realization in the context of the SU(5)/SO(5) coset. We show that the top-partners in this model can have significant branching ratios to the additional scalars and a third generation quark, compared to the usual Standard Model channels. Amongst the most promising signatures at the LHC are final states containing a diphoton resonance along with a top quark.