Mass distributions of dijet resonances from excited quarks at proton-proton colliders

Abstract

We study the expected experimental mass distributions of dijet resonances from excited quarks in proton-proton collisions at energies s = 13, 14, 27, 100, 300, and 500 TeV. We explore in detail the expected shapes at both the generator and experimental levels, and identify within the distributions the effects of the excited quark natural width, parton momentum distributions of the proton, radiation, and experimental resolution. We present both differential and cumulative probability distributions as a function of dijet mass, and the signal acceptance of a window in dijet mass centered on each resonance. We find that for a range of resonance masses, between 10% and 50% of s, the dijet mass distributions and window acceptance are practically universal, approximately invariant under changes in resonance mass and s. This universality is violated when the resonance mass reaches 60% of s, because the steepness of the parton momentum distributions of the proton produces a significant tail at low dijet mass. This work supports our Snowmass 2021 study on the sensitivity to dijet resonances at proton-proton colliders.