https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-023-12177-4
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
On the sensitivity reach of 
production with preferential couplings to third generation fermions at the LHC
1
Departamento de Física, Universidad de Los Andes, Cra. 1 # 18a-12, Bogotá, Colombia
2
Sección Física, Departamento de Ciencias, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Apartado 1761, Lima, Peru
3
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Vanderbilt University, 37235, Nashville, TN, USA
Received:
31
July
2023
Accepted:
22
October
2023
Published online:
11
November
2023
Leptoquarks (s) are hypothetical particles that appear in various extensions of the Standard Model (SM), that can explain observed differences between SM theory predictions and experimental results. The production of these particles has been widely studied at various experiments, most recently at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), and stringent bounds have been placed on their masses and couplings, assuming the simplest beyond-SM (BSM) hypotheses. However, the limits are significantly weaker for models with family non-universal couplings containing enhanced couplings to third-generation fermions. We present a new study on the production of a at the LHC, with preferential couplings to third-generation fermions, considering proton-proton collisions at 
and 
. Such a hypothesis is well motivated theoretically and it can explain the recent anomalies in the precision measurements of 
-meson decay rates, specifically the 
ratios. Under a simplified model where the masses and couplings are free parameters, we focus on cases where the decays to a 
lepton and a 
quark, and study how the results are affected by different assumptions about chiral currents and interference effects with other BSM processes with the same final states, such as diagrams with a heavy vector boson, 
. The analysis is performed using machine learning techniques, resulting in an increased discovery reach at the LHC, allowing us to probe new physics phase space which addresses the -meson anomalies, for masses up to 
, for the high luminosity LHC scenario.
© The Author(s) 2023
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Funded by SCOAP3. SCOAP3 supports the goals of the International Year of Basic Sciences for Sustainable Development.
