Paper detail

LHC Implications of the WIMP Miracle and Grand Unification

With the assumptions that dark matter consists of an electroweak triplet and that the gauge couplings unify at a high scale, we identify robust phenomenological trends of possible matter contents at the TeV scale. In particular, we expect new colored states within the LHC reach that can have Yukawa couplings lambda to quarks and the Higgs. We investigate the collider signatures that are characteristic of all such models by adopting the model with the simplest matter content as a benchmark. The lambda couplings are constrained by flavor/CP physics. In the largest portion of the allowed parameter space the new colored particles are stable on collider time scales, hence appearing as R-hadrons, for which there is discovery potential at the early LHC (sqrt{s}=7 TeV, 1 fb^(-1)). Flavor/CP constraints nevertheless do allow a sizable range of lambda where the new colored particles decay promptly, providing a new Higgs production channel with a cross-section governed by the strong interaction. Studying the case of h to WW, we show that it is possible for the Higgs production from this new channel to be discovered before that from the Standard Model at the LHC.