Publication Date

2025

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

First Advisor

de la Torre Perez, Hector

Degree Name

M.S. (Master of Science)

Legacy Department

Department of Physics

Abstract

Vector-like quarks (VLQs) appear in various extensions of the Standard Model that consider a new strongly interacting sector to resolve the fine-tuning problem. These new particles can provide radiative corrections to the Higgs mass while also having electroweak-singlet masses. This latter property would allow them to escape existing constraints from Higgs boson measurements and electroweak precision data, which disfavor the existence of a fourth generation of quarks.

VLQ can be produced at colliders, with a variety of production modes and decay mechanisms open for study. In this work, we investigate the pair production of VLQ Tops (T), which are assumed to decay primarily through the channels T → tH and T → tZ. We compare such a production in two different collider scenarios: the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC), a proton-proton collider with a center-of-mass energy of 14 TeV, and a muon collider with a center-of-mass energy of 10 TeV.

Simulated events are used to understand the relevant signature, design an event selection in the all-hadronic channel, and study the sensitivity of both scenarios, including the importance of the most relevant backgrounds. The analysis covers different VLQ masses, ranging from 1 TeV to 5 TeV. Results shed light on the discovery capabilities of future colliders and provide ideas for improving the design of upcoming VLQ searches.

Extent

81 pages

Language

en

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Rights Statement 2

NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.

Media Type

Text

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