The scattering of electroweak gauge bosons is closely connected to the electroweak gauge symmetry and its spontaneous breaking through the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism. Since it contains triple and quartic gauge boson vertices, the measurement of this scattering process allows to probe the self-interactions of weak bosons. The contribution of the Higgs boson to the weak boson scattering amplitude ensures unitarity of the scattering matrix. Therefore, the scattering of massive electroweak gauge bosons is sensitive to deviations from the Standard Model prescription of the electroweak interaction and of the properties of the Higgs boson. At the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the scattering of massive electroweak gauge bosons is accessible through the measurement of purely electroweak production of two jets and two gauge bosons. No such process has been observed before. Being the channel with the least amount of background from QCD-mediated production of the same final state, the most promising channel for the first measurement of a process containing massive electroweak gauge boson scattering is the one with two like-charge W bosons and two jets in the final state. This thesis presents the first measurement of electroweak production of two jets and two identically charged W bosons, which yields the first observation of a process with contributions from quartic gauge interactions of massive electroweak gauge bosons. An overview of the most important issues in Monte Carlo simulation of vector boson scattering processes with current Monte Carlo generators is given in this work. The measurement of the final state of two jets and two leptonically decaying same-charge W bosons is conducted based on proton-proton collision data with a center-of-mass energy of √s = 8 TeV, taken in 2012 with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. The cross section of electroweak production of two jets and two like-charge W bosons is measured with a significance of 3.6 standard deviations to be σ(W± W±jj−EW[fiducial]) = 1.3 ± 0.4(stat.) ± 0.2(syst.) fb in a fiducial phase space region selected to enhance the contribution from W W scattering. The measurement is compatible with the Standard Model prediction of σ(W±W± jj−EW[fiducial]) = 0.95 ± 0.06 fb. Based on this measurement, limits on anomalous quartic gauge couplings are derived. The effect of anomalous quartic gauge couplings is simulated within the framework of an effective chiral Lagrangian unitarized with the K-matrix method. The limits for the anomalous coupling parameters α4 and α5 are found to be −0.14 < α4 < 0.16 and −0.23 < α5 < 0.24 at 95 % confidence level. Furthermore, the prospects for the measurement of the electroweak production of two same-charge W bosons and two jets within the Standard Model and with additional doubly charged resonances after the upgrade of the ATLAS detector and the LHC are investigated. For a high-luminosity LHC with a center-of-mass energy of √s = 14 TeV, the significance of the measurement with an integrated luminosity of 3000 fb^−1 is estimated to be 18.7 standard deviations. It can be improved by 30 % by extending the inner tracking detector of the atlas experiment up to an absolute pseudorapidity of |η| = 4.0.

Title: Electroweak symmetry breaking by dynamically generated masses of quarks and leptons Author: Adam Smetana Department: Institute of Particle and Nuclear Physics, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University Supervisor: Ing. Jiří Hošek, DrSc., Department of Theoretical Physics, Nuclear Physics Institute, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic Abstract: The aim of the thesis is to study models of the electroweak symmetry breaking caused by dynamically generated masses of quarks and lep- tons. (1) We perform the basic analysis whether the main underlying idea, that the masses of only known fermions can provide the elec- troweak symmetry breaking, is actually feasible. For that we elaborate a two-composite-Higgs-doublet model of the top-quark and neutrino condensation. The model suggests rather large number, O(100), of right-handed neutrinos. (2) We analyze the model of strong Yukawa dynamics where the dynamical fermion mass generation is provided by exchanges of new elementary massive complex doublet scalar fields. We focus on solving the coupled Schwinger-Dyson equations for fermion and scalar self-energies by means of approximative methods. We doc- ument that strongly hierarchical mass spectra can be reproduced. (3) We elaborate the flavor gauge model where the dynamical fermion mass...

Bien qu'ayant beaucoup de succès pour décrire la grande variété de phénomènes de la physique des particules, le Modèle Standard (MS) laisse certaines propriétés de la nature sans explication. Ici, nous allons mettre l'accent sur le traitement différent des chiralités de type gauche et droite dans le cadre du MS. Une façon naturelle d'expliquer cela est de plonger le MS dans un modèle plus fondamental, capable de traiter les chiralités d'une manière symétrique. Cette classe de modèles, connue sous le nom de "modèles à symétrie droite-gauche" (LR models, en anglais), introduit une nouvelle interaction qui couple préférentiellement aux champs "droitiers". Puis, à une haute échelle d'énergie, la symétrie reliant droite et gauche est brisée spontanément donnant naissance au MS et aux phénomènes de violation de symétrie de parité. La manière spécifique par laquelle le mécanisme Brout-Englert-Higgs (BEH) se produit dans les modèles LR peut être sondée par des observables électrofaibles de précision, ce qui sert de premier test de l'extension du MS dans le secteur électrofaible. Comme conséquence du mécanisme BEH dans les modèles LR, de nouveaux bosons de jauge sont présents. Ce sont W’ et Z’, censés être beaucoup plus lourds que les bosons de jauge W et Z afin d'expliquer pourquoi ils n'ont jamais été vus jusqu'à présent. Ces nouvelles particules sont accompagnées d'une riche phénoménologie, comme de nouvelles sources de violation de CP au-delà de celle du MS. En outre, un nouveau secteur scalaire neutre introduit des courants qui changent la saveur (FCNC, en anglais) au niveau des arbres, un processus fortement restreint dans le MS, où il arrive seulement à l'ordre des boucles. L'existence de FCNCs fournit des contraintes extrêmement puissantes sur les modèles LR, et mérite donc une attention spéciale, en particulier lors du calcul des corrections venant de la QCD. Nous calculons donc les corrections au Next-to-Leading Order des effets à de courtes distances venant de la QCD aux contributions du modèle LR aux observables liées au mélange de mésons neutres et sensibles donc aux FCNC.Ensuite, nous considérons l'étude phénoménologique des modèles LR afin de tester leur viabilité et leur structure. Plus particulièrement, nous considérons le cas où des doublets scalaires sont responsables de la brisure du groupe de jauge des modèles LR. A cet effet, nous menons une étude combinée des observables de précision électrofaible, des bornes directes sur la masse des nouveaux bosons de jauge et des observables qui dérivent de l'oscillation des mésons neutres, dans le cas plus simple où la matrice de mixing dans le secteur droit est égal à la matrice CKM. Ces observables sont combinées dans le cadre du paquet CKMfitter d'analyse statistique. La combinaison de différentes classes d'observables doit prendre en compte la particularité des incertitudes théoriques, qui ne sont pas de nature statistique comme d'autres sources d'incertitude. A ce propos, nous considérons aussi la comparaison de différentes modèles d'incertitude théorique, afin de trouver des méthodes bien adaptées à la situation actuelle de notre connaissance des incertitudes théoriques impliquées dans un fit global en physique de la saveur. / Though very successful in explaining a wide variety of particle physics phenomena, the Standard Model (SM) leaves unexplained some properties of nature. Here we focus on the different behaviours of left- and right-handed chiralities, or in other words the violation of parity symmetry. A possible and somewhat natural avenue to explain this feature is to embed the SM into a more symmetric framework, which treats the chiralities on equal footing. This class of models, the Left-Right (LR) Models, introduces new gauge interactions that couple preferentially to right-handed fields. Then, at an energy scale high enough, LR symmetry is spontaneously broken through the Brout-Englert-Higgs (BEH) mechanism, thus giving origin to the SM and to parity violating phenomena. The specific way in which the BEH mechanism operates in LR Models can be probed by EW Precision Observables, consisting of quantities that have been very accurately measured, serving as a first test of consistency for extensions of the SM in the EW sector. We revisit a simple realization of LR Models containing doublet scalars, and consider the phenomenological study of this doublet scenario in order to test the viability and structure of the LR Models. In particular, there is a rich phenomenology associated to the new gauge bosons W’ et Z’ introduced by LR Models, such as new sources of CP violation beyond the one of the SM. Moreover, the extended neutral scalar sector introduces Flavour Changing Neutral Couplings (FCNC) at tree level, which are strongly suppressed in the SM where they arrive first at one loop. FCNCs typically lead to extremely powerful constraints since they contribute to meson-mixing processes, and therefore deserve close attention. For this reason, we consider the calculation of short-distance QCD effects correcting the LR Model contributions to meson-mixing observables up to the Next-to-Leading Order (NLO), a precision required to set solid lower bounds on the LR Model scales. Finally, we combine in a global fit electroweak precision observables, direct searches for the new gauge bosons and meson oscillation observables in the simple case where the right-handed analogous of the CKM mixing-matrix is equal to the CKM matrix itself (a scenario called CKMfitter symmetry). The full set of the observables is combined by using the CKMfitter statistical framework, based on a frequentist analysis and a particular scheme for modeling theoretical uncertainties. We also discuss other possible modelings of theoretical uncertainties in a prospective study for future global flavour fits made by the CKMfitter Collaboration.