Distinguishing the higgs boson from the dilaton at the large hadron collider.

It is likely that the LHC will observe a color- and charge-neutral scalar whose decays are consistent with those of the standard model (SM) Higgs boson. The Higgs interpretation of such a discovery is not the only possibility. For example, electroweak symmetry breaking could be triggered by a spontaneously broken, nearly conformal sector. The spectrum of states at the electroweak scale would then contain a narrow scalar resonance, the pseudo-Goldstone boson of conformal symmetry breaking, with Higgs-boson-like properties. If the conformal sector is strongly coupled, this pseudodilaton may be the only new state accessible at high energy colliders. We discuss the prospects for distinguishing this mode from a minimal Higgs boson at the LHC and ILC. The main discriminants between the two scenarios are (i) cubic self-interactions and (ii) a potential enhancement of couplings to massless SM gauge bosons.

High energy field theory in truncated anti-de Sitter space.

In this Letter we show that in five-dimensional anti-de Sitter (AdS) space truncated by boundary branes, effective field theory techniques are reliable at high energy (much higher than the scale suggested by the Kaluza-Klein mass gap), provided one computes suitable observables. We argue that in the model of Randall and Sundrum for generating the weak scale from the AdS warp factor, the high energy behavior of gauge fields can be calculated in a cutoff independent manner, provided one restricts Green's functions to external points on the Planck brane. Using the AdS/CFT (conformal field theory) correspondence, we calculate the one-loop correction to the Planck brane gauge propagator due to charged bulk fields. These effects give rise to nonuniversal logarithmic energy dependence for a range of scales above the Kaluza-Klein gap.