Probing minimal flavor violation at the CERN LHC

If the LHC experiments discover new particles that couple to the standard model fermions, then measurements by ATLAS and CMS can contribute to our understanding of the flavor puzzles. We demonstrate this statement by investigating a scenario where extra SU(2)-singlet down-type quarks are within the LHC reach. By measuring masses, production cross sections, and relative decay rates, minimal flavor violation (MFV) can in principle be excluded. Conversely, these measurements can probe the way in which MFV applies to the new degrees of freedom. Many of our conclusions are valid in a much more general context than this specific extension of the standard model.

Figure 1

Leading order cross section for $B^{\prime }$ pair production at the LHC calculated at leading order using Pythia 6.4.10 [21] with CTEQ5L parton distribution functions [20]. From bottom to top, the total cross section for 1, 2, and 3 generations of $B^{\prime }$ quarks. See 9 for the variation of the cross section from different choices of factorization scale.