Abstract
We propose a tantalizing possibility that misinterpretation of the reconstructed missing momentum may have yielded the observed discrepancies among measurements of the W-mass in different collider experiments. We introduce a proof-of-principle scenario characterized by a new physics particle, which can be produced associated with the W-boson in hadron collisions and contributes to the net missing momentum observed in a detector. We show that these exotic events pass the selection criteria imposed by various collaborations at reasonably high rates. Consequently, in the presence of even a handful of these events, a fit based on the ansatz that the missing momentum is primarily due to neutrinos (as it happens in the Standard Model), yields a W-boson mass that differs from its true value. Moreover, the best fit mass depends on the nature of the collider and the center-of-mass energy of collisions. We construct a barebones model that demonstrates this possibility quantitatively while satisfying current constraints. Interestingly, we find that the nature of the new physics particle and its interactions appear as a variation of the physics of Axion-like particles after a field redefinition.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Rick S. Gupta for helpful discussions, Gautam Bhattacharyya and Debajyoti Choudhury for comments on an earlier version of the draft. We acknowledge the computational facility provided by the Department of Theoretical Physics at TIFR. Part of this work was completed and benefitted from discussions held at the workshop “Particle Physics: Phenomena, Puzzles, Promises” (Code:ICTS/p2p3/11) hosted by ICTS, TIFR. TB acknowledges the hospitality provided to him by TIFR where a substantial amount of this work was completed.
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Bandyopadhyay, T., Budhraja, A., Mukherjee, S. et al. A twisted tale of the transverse-mass tail. J. High Energ. Phys. 2023, 135 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP08(2023)135
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP08(2023)135