New physics in triboson event topologies (2112.00137v2)

Abstract: We present a study of the sensitivity to models of new physics of proton collisions resulting in three electroweak bosons. As a benchmark, we analyze models in which an exotic scalar field $\phi$ is produced in association with a gauge boson ($V=\gamma$ or $Z$). The scalar then decays to a pair of bosons, giving the process $pp\rightarrow \phi V\rightarrow V'V"V$. We interpret our results in a set of effective field theories where the exotic scalar fields couple to the Standard Model through pairs of electroweak gauge bosons. We estimate the sensitivity of the LHC and HL-LHC datasets and find sensitivity to cross sections in the 10 fb -- 0.5 fb range, corresponding to scalar masses of 500 GeV to 2 TeV and effective operator coefficients up to 35 TeV.