The phenomenology of electroweak symmetry breaking scenarios

We explore the experimental consequences of several models designed to provide a mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking, fermion mass generation and preventing large radiative corrections to any Higgs scalars.; We analyze the decay of the Standard Model Higgs particle into muons. This observation is important to determine whether the Higgs particle that generates mass for the weak bosons is also responsible for mass generation of the second generation of fermions. By combining with the weak-boson fusion channel, observing h → μμ is feasible at the LHC with a delivered luminosity of 300 fb−1 at 3σ statistical significance for 110 GeV < m_h < 140 GeV in the Standard Model.; We study constraints on mixing of the Higgs with a radion. The radion couplings to Standard Model fields are order $O$(TeV−1) to the trace of the energy momentum tensor. We calculate longitudinal vector boson scattering amplitudes to explore the constraints on the radion mass and its coupling from perturbative unitarity. The scattering cross section can indeed become non-perturbative at energies prior to reaching the TeV brane cutoff scale, but only when some curvature-Higgs mixing on the TeV brane is present.; We study the low energy phenomenology of the little Higgs model. We first discuss the linearized effective theory of the “littlest Higgs model” and study the low energy constraints on the model parameters. We explore the characteristic signatures to test the model in the current and future collider experiments. We find that the LHC has great potential to discover the new SU(2) gauge bosons and the possible new U(1) gauge boson to the multi-TeV mass scale. At a linear collider, precision measurements on the triple gauge boson couplings could be sensitive to the new physics scale of a few TeV.; Finally we explore the phenomenology of Higgs operators which may be generated by these mechanisms. If the resolution to these problems lies at a somewhat higher scale, out of reach of the LHC, measuring these Higgs operators can give us a hint of the physics that provides the resolution, and the scale at which the resolution occurs.