Search NASA⌕ Search

Engineering topics

Murphy, Taylor (ORCID:0000000232159652)

Publications and source records attributed to Murphy, Taylor (ORCID:0000000232159652).

3 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

Leptonic signatures of color-sextet scalars. II. Exploiting unique large- E T miss signals at the LHC

The diverse and distinct collider phenomenology of color-sextet scalars motivates a thorough investigation of their effective couplings to the Standard Model at the LHC. Some of the more unique sextet signals involve not only jets but also leptons. In previous work, we proposed an LHC search for color-sextet scalars in a channel with jets and a hard opposite-sign lepton pair, which results from a dimension-six coupling. In this sequel we study the counterpart processes with neutrinos, which produce jets in association with missing transverse energy ( E T miss ) in addition to possible leptons. We consider multiple search channels, including both single and pair sextet production, all characterized by significant missing energy and some featuring distinctive kinematic features. Our multifaceted study consists of three reinterpreted existing searches and a joint-likelihood analysis designed by us to maximize HL-LHC sensitivity to single sextet production. We show that our dedicated strategy in the jets + lepton + E T miss channel can supersede today’s limits from reinterpreted searches, and we make sensitivity projections for the HL-LHC. Altogether, our analysis can exclude sextet scalars lighter than 4.4 TeV or probe effective cutoffs as high as 16.8 TeV. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Astronomy & Astrophysics↗
DOE OSTI2024

Taking aim at the wino-Higgsino plane with the LHC

In this work we explore multiple search strategies for Higgsinos and mixed Higgsino-wino states in the minimal supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) and project the results onto the ( μ , M 2 ) plane. Assuming associated production of Higgsino-like pairs with a W / Z boson, we develop a search in a channel characterized by a hadronically tagged vector boson accompanied by missing energy. We use as our template an ATLAS search for dark matter produced in association with a hadronically decaying vector boson, but upgrade the search by implementing a joint-likelihood analysis, binning the missing transverse energy distribution, which greatly improves the search sensitivity. For Higgsino-like states (more than 96% admixture) we find sensitivity to masses up to 550 GeV. For well-mixed Higgsino-wino states (70–30% Higgsino) we still find sensitivities above 300 GeV. Using this newly proposed search, we draw a phenomenological map of the wino-Higgsino parameter space, recasting several complementary searches for disappearing tracks, soft leptons, trileptons, and hadronic diboson events in order to predict LHC coverage of the ( μ , M 2 ) mass plane at integrated luminosities of up to 3 ab − 1 . Altogether, the full run of the HL-LHC can exclude much of the “natural” ( μ , M 2 < 500 GeV ) wino-Higgsino parameter space. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Astronomy & Astrophysics↗