The era of charmed resonance searches at the LHC

@misc{whiteson2026charmed,
  title = {{The era of charmed resonance searches at the LHC}},
  author = {Daniel Whiteson},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = sep,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.32054},
  eprint = {2609.32054},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.32054},
}

TY  - UNPB
TI  - The era of charmed resonance searches at the LHC
AU  - Daniel Whiteson
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/25
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.32054
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.32054
AB  - The LHC dijet program has searched extensively for resonances decaying to inclusive jets and, more recently, to bottom-quark jets, where the sensitivity enhancement from suppression of the background outweighs the loss of signal efficiency in bottom-quark tagging. However, no dedicated search for dijet resonances containing charm-tagged jets has been performed. We study the charm-tagging performance required to make such searches competitive with the inclusive dijet search. Using the ATLAS 13 TeV dijet mass spectrum with 139 fb^−1, we predict the expected charm-tagged spectra from simulated jet-flavor fractions and parameterized charm-, bottom-, and light-jet tagging efficiencies, and estimate the sensitivity of a profile-likelihood search in exclusive one- and two-tag categories. At the loosest working point of the current tagger, charm-tagged searches improve the expected sensitivity to a resonance decaying to two charm quarks across the full resonance mass range considered, although the quantitative sensitivity depends on the poorly constrained high-pt behavior of charm-tagging efficiencies and on the simulated heavy-flavor composition of the dijet background. These results provide performance targets for charm taggers and motivate the development of dedicated charm-tagged dijet resonance searches at the LHC.
ER  -