Causality-violating Higgs singlets at the LHC

We construct a simple class of compactified five-dimensional metrics which admits closed timelike curves (CTCs), and derive the resulting CTCs as analytic solutions to the geodesic equations of motion. The associated Einstein tensor satisfies all the null, weak, strong and dominant energy conditions. In particular, no negative-energy “tachyonic” matter is required. In extra-dimensional models where gauge charges are bound to our brane, it is the Kaluza-Klein modes of gauge singlets that may travel through the CTCs. From our brane point of view, many of these Kaluza-Klein modes would appear to travel backward in time. We give a simple model in which time-traveling Higgs singlets can be produced by the LHC, either from decay of the Standard Model Higgs or through mixing with the Standard Model Higgs. The signature of these time-traveling singlets is a secondary decay vertex preappearing before the primary vertex which produced them. The two vertices are correlated by momentum conservation. We demonstrate that preappearing vertices in the Higgs singlet-doublet mixing model may well be observable at the LHC.