Simplified Limits on Resonances at the LHC

Understand

In the earliest stages of evaluating new collider data, especially if a small excess may be present, it would be useful to have a method for comparing the data with entire classes of models, to get an immediate sense of which classes could conceivably be relevant.

• In this paper, we propose a method that applies when the new physics invoked to explain the excess corresponds to the production and decay of a single, relatively narrow, $s$-channel resonance.
• A simplifed model of the resonance allows us to convert an estimated signal cross section into model-independent bounds on the product of the branching ratios corresponding to production and decay.
• This quickly reveals whether a given class of models could possibly produce a signal of the required size at the LHC.