Unsupervised hadronic SUEP at the LHC

Confining dark sectors with pseudo-conformal dynamics produce SUEPs, or Soft Unclustered Energy Patterns, at colliders: isotropic dark hadrons with soft and democratic energies. We target the experimental nightmare scenario, SUEPs in exotic Higgs decays, where all dark hadrons decay promptly to SM hadrons. First, we identify three promising observables: the charged particle multiplicity, the event ring isotropy, and the matrix of geometric distances between charged tracks. Their patterns can be exploited through a cut-and-count search, supervised machine learning, or an unsupervised autoencoder. We find that the HL-LHC will probe exotic Higgs branching ratios at the per-cent level, even without a detailed knowledge of the signal features. Our techniques can be applied to other SUEP searches, especially the unsupervised strategy, which is independent of overly specific model assumptions and the corresponding precision simulations.

Automated summary

Confining dark sectors with pseudo-conformal dynamics can produce SUEPs, and their patterns can be explored through observable measures such as charged particle multiplicity, event ring isotropy, and geometric distances between charged tracks. Utilizing these techniques, particularly the unsupervised strategy, can provide insights into exotic Higgs branching ratios at colliders without requiring detailed knowledge of signal features.