W Z plus missing-E-T signal from gaugino pair production at LHC7

LHC searches for supersymmetry currently focus on strongly produced sparticles, which are copiously produced if gluinos and squarks have masses of a few hundred GeV. However, in supersymmetric models with heavy scalars, as favored by the decoupling solution to the SUSY flavor and CP problems, and m((g) over tilde) greater than or similar to 500 GeV as indicated by recent LHC results, chargino-neutralino ((W) over tilde (+/-)(1)(Z) over tilde (2)) production is the dominant cross section for m((W) over tilde1) similar to m((Z) over tilde2) < m(<(g)over tilde>)/3 at LHC with root s = 7 TeV (LHC7). Furthermore, if m((Z) over tilde1) + (m (Z) over tilde) less than or similar to m((Z) over tilde2) less than or similar to m((Z) over tilde1) + m(h), then (Z) over tilde (2) dominantly decays via (Z) over tilde (2) -> (Z) over tilde (1)Z, while (W) over tilde (1) decays via (W) over tilde (1) -> (Z) over tilde W-1. We investigate the LHC7 reach in the W Z + (sic)T channel (for both leptonic and hadronic decays of the W boson) in models with and without the assumption of gaugino mass universality. In the case of the mSUGRA/CMSSM model with heavy squark masses, the LHC7 discovery reach in the W Z+ (sic)T channel becomes competetive with the reach in the canonical (sic)T + jets channel for integrated luminosities similar to 30 fb(-1). We also present the LHC7 reach for a simplified model with arbitrary m((Z) over tilde1) and m((W) over tilde1) similar to m((Z) over tilde2). Here, we find a reach of up to m((W) over tilde1) similar to 200 (250) GeV for 10 (30) fb(-1).

Constraining anomalous Higgs boson interactions

The recently announced Higgs boson discovery marks the dawn of the direct probing of the electroweak symmetry breaking sector. Sorting out the dynamics responsible for electroweak symmetry breaking now requires probing the Higgs boson interactions and searching for additional states connected to this sector. In this work, we analyze the constraints on Higgs boson couplings to the standard model gauge bosons using the available data from Tevatron and LHC. We work in a model-independent framework expressing the departure of the Higgs boson couplings to gauge bosons by dimension-six operators. This allows for independent modifications of its couplings to gluons, photons, and weak gauge bosons while still preserving the Standard Model (SM) gauge invariance. Our results indicate that best overall agreement with data is obtained if the cross section of Higgs boson production via gluon fusion is suppressed with respect to its SM value and the Higgs boson branching ratio into two photons is enhanced, while keeping the production and decays associated to couplings to weak gauge bosons close to their SM prediction.