Searching for third-generation composite leptoquarks at the LHC

Fermion masses may arise via mixing of elementary fermions with composite fermions of a strong sector in scenarios of strongly-coupled electroweak symmetry breaking. The strong sector may contain leptoquark states with masses as light as several hundred GeV. In the present study we focus on the scalar modes of such leptoquarks since their bosonic couplings are determined completely and hence their production cross sections only depend on their masses. We study all the possible gauge-invariant non-derivative and single-derivative couplings of the scalar leptoquarks to the quarks and leptons, which turn out to be, predominantly, of the third generation. We examine their phenomenology and outline search strategies for their dominant decay modes at the LHC.