Smoking Guns for On-Shell New Physics at the LHC

Using Tevatron bounds we derive upper limits on the LHC Higgs boson production rate assuming that no beyond the standard model (BSM) particles are being produced near their mass shell. A violation of these limits would constitute a smoking gun for light BSM particles. Furthermore, we demonstrate how R-T, the ratio of the partially integrated Higgs transverse momentum distribution to the inclusive rate, can also be used as a probe of light BSM particles. This ratio is insensitive to heavy virtual effects and is approximately model independent. The perturbative expansion for R-T has reduced renormalization scale dependence, due to a cancellation of Wilson coefficients. A deviation from the SM value implies that light BSM particles are being produced near their mass shell. A model with colored scalars is used to investigate the model independence of R-T.