Machine learning-enhanced search for a vectorlike singlet $B$ quark decaying to a singlet scalar or pseudoscalar

Abstract

The presence of a new decay mode relaxes the current mass exclusion limits on vectorlike quarks considerably. We consider the case of a weak-singlet vectorlike $B$ quark that can decay to a singlet scalar or pseudoscalar $\Phi$. In an earlier paper [A. Bhardwaj et al., Roadmap to explore vectorlike quarks decaying to a new scalar or pseudoscalar, Phys. Rev. D, 106 (2022) 095014; arXiv:2203.13753], we mapped the possibilities to explore such setups at the LHC. We showed that it is possible for a $B$ quark to decay into $\Phi$ and the $\Phi$ to dominantly decay to a pair of gluons or $b$ quark(s) without fine-tuning the parameters. In this paper, we present a collider search strategy to look for the pair production of singlet $B$ quarks. If both $B$ quarks decay into $b\Phi$ pairs, the final state is fully hadronic: $BB\to (b\Phi )(b\Phi )\to (bgg)(bgg)/(bbb)(bbb)$, which is very challenging to probe. Therefore, we consider a simpler mixed decay specific to the singlet $B$ case, $BB\to (b\Phi )(tW)$ with a lepton in the final state, to achieve the best sensitivity at the high-luminosity LHC. We use a deep neural network with a weighted cross-entropy loss to separate the signal from the huge SM background. Our analysis shows that large areas of the $M_B-M_{\Phi }$ parameter space are discoverable through this signature. We show how the discovery and exclusion regions scale with the branching ratio in the new decay mode. We also estimate the reach in the inclusive monolepton channel with the same network model.

15 pages, 12 figures and 2 tables. Article matches the published version

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