Bump Hunting Inside Jets with Energy Correlators

Abstract

Energy correlators exhibit well-understood scaling behavior in the collinear limit, governed by perturbative QCD dynamics. We explore how this scaling regime is broken by new physics, converting precise energy correlator measurements into a broadband search for new physics. Under generic assumptions, unitarity and positivity are sufficient to classify and constrain the relevant signatures, which imprint an angular resonance on top of this smoothly scaling background. This converts the search into bump hunting within jets. As a proof of principle, we derive projected LHC sensitivity for a light hadrophilic $Z'$, finding competitive constraints with existing searches.