  It is likely that the LHC will observe a color- and charge-neutral scalar
whose decays are consistent with those of the Standard Model (SM) Higgs boson.
The Higgs interpretation of such a discovery is not the only possibility. For
example, electroweak symmetry breaking (EWSB) could be triggered by a
spontaneously broken, nearly conformal sector. The spectrum of states at the
electroweak scale would then contain a narrow scalar resonance, the
pseudo-Goldstone boson of conformal symmetry breaking, with Higgs-like
properties. If the conformal sector is strongly coupled, this pseudo-dilaton
may be the only new state accessible at high energy colliders. We discuss the
prospects for distinguishing this mode from a minimal Higgs boson at the LHC
and ILC. The main discriminants between the two scenarios are (1) cubic
self-interactions and (2) a potential enhancement of couplings to massless SM
gauge bosons. A particularly interesting situation arises when the scale f of
conformal symmetry breaking is approximately the electroweak scale v~246 GeV.
Although in this case the LHC may not be able to tell apart a pseudo-dilaton
from the Higgs boson, the self-interactions differ in a way that depends only
on the scaling dimension of certain operators in the conformal sector. This
opens the possibility of using dilaton pair production at future colliders as a
probe of EWSB induced by nearly conformal new physics.
