English

Approaching a strong fourth family

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2011-02-09 v2

Abstract

A heavy fourth family is an example of new physics which is well defined and familiar in some respects, but which nevertheless has radical implications. In particular it eliminates a light Higgs description of electroweak symmetry breaking. We discuss an early signal for heavy quarks at the LHC in the form of an excess of "WW-jets", and as well show how WW-jets may be useful in the reconstruction of the heavy quark masses. We argue that fourth family quarks can be distinguished from vector-like quarks of a similar mass at roughly the same time that a same sign lepton signal becomes visible. Given the large mass of the fourth neutrino we describe how a picture for neutrino mass emerges in the absence of right-handed neutrinos, and how it suggests the existence of a remnant flavor gauge symmetry. Based on talk given at "Second Workshop on Beyond 3 Generation Standard Model -- New Fermions at the Crossroads of Tevatron and LHC", January 2010, Taipei Taiwan.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1001.5321,
  title  = {Approaching a strong fourth family},
  author = {B. Holdom},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1001.5321},
  year   = {2011}
}

Comments

14 pages, 10 figures, references added and slight changes

R2 v1 2026-06-21T14:41:02.479Z