Theta dependence in holographic QCD

We study the effects of the CP-breaking topological theta-term in the large N-c QCD model by Witten, Sakai and Sugimoto with N-f degenerate light flavors. We first compute the ground state energy density, the topological susceptibility and the masses of the lowest lying mesons, finding agreement with expectations from the QCD chiral effective action. Then, focusing on the N (f) = 2 case, we consider the baryonic sector and determine, to leading order in the small theta regime, the related holographic instantonic soliton solutions. We find that while the baryon spectrum does not receive Omicron(theta) corrections, this is not the case for observables like the electromagnetic form factor of the nucleons. In particular, it exhibits a dipole term, which turns out to be vector-meson dominated. The resulting neutron electric dipole moment, which is exactly the opposite as that of the proton, is of the same order of magnitude of previous estimates in the literature. Finally, we compute the CP-violating pion-nucleon coupling constant g ($) over bar (pi NN,) finding that it is zero to leading order in the large N (c) limit.

Neutron Electric Dipole Moment from Gauge-String Duality

Andrea Manenti

We compute the electric dipole moment of nucleons in the large N-c QCD model by Witten, Sakai, and Sugimoto with N-f = 2 degenerate massive flavors. Baryons in the model are instantonic solitons of an effective five-dimensional action describing the whole tower of mesonic fields. We find that the dipole electromagnetic form factor of the nucleons, induced by a finite topological. angle, exhibits complete vector meson dominance. We are able to evaluate the contribution of each vector meson to the final result a small number of modes are relevant to obtain an accurate estimate. Extrapolating the model parameters to real QCD data, the neutron electric dipole moment is evaluated to be d(n) = 1.8 x 10(-16)theta e cm. The electric dipole moment of the proton is exactly the opposite.

Amer Physical Soc2017

Electroweak and Higgs Physics at Very High Energy

Lorenzo Ricci

Effective Field Theories (EFTs) allow a description of low energy effects of heavy new physics Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) in terms of higher dimensional operators among the SM fields. EFTs are not only an elegant and consistent way to describe heavy new physics but they represent, at the same time, a valuable experimental tool for collider searches. The Standard Model Effective Field Theory naturally parametrizes the space of models BSM and measuring its interactions is, nowadays, substantial part of the theoretical and the experimental program at the (HL-)LHC and at future colliders. In this thesis we address the theoretical challenges of this Beyond the Standard Model precision program, following three different paths.Firstly, we present some results towards the so-called high-

p_T

program at the (HL-)LHC, targeting to measure energy growing effects of higher dimensional operators in the tail of kinematic distributions. Concretely, we focus on dilepton production and we study the sensitivity to flavor universal dimension-six operators interfering with the SM and enhanced by the energy. We produce theoretical predictions for the SM and the dim-6 EFT operators at NLO-QCD, including 1-loop EW logs. Our predictions are based on event reweighting of SM Montecarlo simulations and allow an easy scan of the multi-dimensional new physics parameter space on data. Furthermore we asses the impact of the various sources of theoretical uncertainties and we study the projected sensitivity of (HL-)LHC to the EFT interactions under consideration and to concrete BSM scenario.We then turn to future colliders and in particular to very high energy lepton colliders. In this context we study the potential of such machines with about 10 TeV center of mass energy to probe Higgs, ElectroWeak and Top physics at 100 TeV via precise measurements of EFT interactions. A peculiar aspect of so energetic ElectroWeak processes is the prominent phenomenon of the EW radiation. On one hand we find that consistent and sufficiently accurate predictions require resummations, that we perform at double logarithmic order. On the other hand we show how the study of the radiation pattern can enhance the sensitivity to new physics. We assess our results in Composite Higgs and Top scenarios and minimal Z' models.Finally, we move to a top-down perspective and we perform a phenomenological study of composite Higgs models with partially composite Standard Models quarks. Starting from maximally symmetric scenarios that realize minimal flavor violation, we test various assumptions for the flavor structure of the strong sector. Among the different models we consider, we find that there is an optimal amount of symmetries that protects from (chromo-)electric dipoles and reduces, at the same time, constraints from other flavor observables.

EPFL2022

Vacuum Stability in Supersymmetric Effective Theories

Leonardo Brizi

The main topics discussed in this thesis are supersymmetric low-energy effective theories and metastability conditions in generic non-renormalizable models with global and local supersymmetry. In the first part we discuss the conditions under which the low-energy expansion in space-time derivatives preserves supersymmetry implying that heavy multiplets can be more efficiently integrated out directly at the superfield level. These conditions translate into the requirements that also fermions and auxiliary fields should be small compared to the heavy mass scale. They apply not only to the matter sector, but also to the gravitational one if present, and imply in that case that the gravitino mass should be small. We finally give a simple prescription to integrate out heavy chiral and vector superfields consisting respectively in imposing stationarity of the superpotential and of the Kähler potential; the procedure holds in the same form both for global and local supersymmetry. In the second part we study general criteria for the existence of metastable vacua which break global supersymmetry in models with local gauge symmetries. In particular we present a strategy to define an absolute upper bound on the mass of the lightest scalar field which depends on the geometrical properties of the Kähler target manifold. This bound can be saturated by properly tuning the superpotential and its positivity therefore represents a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of metastable vacua. It is derived by looking at the subspace of all those directions in field space for which an arbitrary supersymmetric mass term is not allowed and scalar masses are controlled by supersymmetry-breaking splitting effects. This subspace includes not only the direction of supersymmetry breaking, but also the directions of gauge symmetry breaking and the lightest scalar is in general a linear combination of fields spanning all these directions. Our purpose is to show that the largest value for the lightest mass is in general achieved when the lightest scalar is a combination of the Goldstone and the Goldstino partners. We conclude by computing the effects induced by the integration of heavy multiplets on the light masses. In particular we focus on the sGoldstino partners and we show that heavy chiral multiplets induce a negative level-repulsion effect that tends to compromise vacuum stability, whereas heavy vector multiplets in general induce a positive-definite contribution. Our results find application in the context of string-inspired supergravity models, where metastability conditions can be used to discriminate among different compactification scenarios and supersymmetric effective theories can be used to face the problem of moduli stabilization.

EPFL2011