"Theta in new QCD-like sectors"

Speaker: Jonathan Kozaczuk, University of Massachusetts Amherst

When: March 29, 2018 (Thu), 04:00PM to 05:00PM (add to my calendar)
Location: PRB 595

This event is part of the HET Seminar Series.

Many well-motivated extensions of the Standard Model feature vector-like quarks charged both under QCD and a new confining gauge group. In analogy to QCD, one generally expects a theta term associated with the new “hypercolor” sector. In this talk, I will discuss some of the implications of hyper-theta for collider searches, cosmology, and the strong CP problem of QCD. The new theta term results in CP-violating signatures in the “hyper-meson” sector, providing novel discovery modes at the LHC and future colliders. Additionally, one of the hyperpions can be stable, yielding a viable dark matter candidate with its relic abundance set by CP-violating annihilations. If a new vacuum angle is observed in these sectors, it would require the strong CP problem to be solved in the infrared, constituting an “indirect detection” of the QCD axion.