No Arabic abstract
Models with extended Higgs sectors can contain several additional Higgs states, heavier or lighter than the SM Higgs boson. The couplings of lighter extra states to SM particles can be strongly reduced, leading to small cross sections for their direct production. Heavier extra states can have larger couplings to SM particles and, moreover, have large branching fractions into lighter extra states, notably into a SM-like Higgs boson accompagnied by another Higgs state which can be lighter or heavier than 125$sim$GeV. Motivated by corresponding scenarios in the NMSSM we study the prospects for the discovery or exclusion of cascade decays $ggF to H_3 to H_2 + H_1$ in the $bbar{b}bbar{b}$, $bbar{b}tautau$ and $bbar{b}gammagamma$ final states where either $H_1$ or $H_2$ can be SM-like. Significant regions of the NMSSM parameter space can be tested by these searches. These are, however, not confined to models of the NMSSM type.
Beyond the Standard Model scenarios with extensions of the Higgs sector typically predict new resonances that can undergo a series of cascade decays to detectable Standard Model particles. On one hand, sensitivity to such signatures will contribute to the full reconstruction of the extended Higgs potential if a new physics discovery will be made. On the other hand, such cascade decays could be dominant decay channels, thus being potentially the best motivated signatures to achieve a new physics discovery in the first place. In this work, we show how the long short-term memory that is encoded in the cascade decays phenomenology can be exploited in discriminating the signal from the background, where no such information is present. In parallel, we demonstrate for theoretically motivated scenarios that such an approach provides improved sensitivity compared to more standard analyses, where only information about the signals final state kinematics is included.
We introduce and discuss two inter-related mechanisms operative in the electroweak sector of the Standard Model at high energies. Higgsplosion, the first mechanism, occurs at some critical energy in the 25 to 10^3 TeV range, and leads to an exponentially growing decay rate of highly energetic particles into multiple Higgs bosons. We argue that this a well-controlled non-perturbative phenomenon in the Higgs-sector which involves the final state Higgs multiplicities n in the regime n lambda >> 1 where lambda is the Higgs self-coupling. If this mechanism is realised in nature, the cross-sections for producing ultra-high multiplicities of Higgs bosons are likely to become observable and even dominant in this energy range. At the same time, however, the apparent exponential growth of these cross-sections at even higher energies will be tamed and automatically cut-off by a related Higgspersion mechanism. As a result, and in contrast to previous studies, multi-Higgs production does not violate perturbative unitarity. Building on this approach, we then argue that the effects of Higgsplosion alter quantum corrections from very heavy states to the Higgs boson mass. Above a certain energy, which is much smaller than their masses, these states would rapidly decay into multiple Higgs bosons. The heavy states become unrealised as they decay much faster than they are formed. The loop integrals contributing to the Higgs mass will be cut off not by the masses of the heavy states, but by the characteristic loop momenta where their decay widths become comparable to their masses. Hence, the cut-off scale would be many orders of magnitude lower than the heavy mass scales themselves, thus suppressing their quantum corrections to the Higgs boson mass.
The search for heavy Higgs bosons is an essential step in the exploration of the Higgs sector and in probing the Supersymmetric parameter space. This paper discusses the constraints on the M(A) and tan beta parameters derived from the bounds on the different decay channels of the neutral H and A bosons accessible at the LHC, in the framework of the phenomenological MSSM. The implications from the present LHC results and the expected sensitivity of the 14 TeV data are discussed in terms of the coverage of the [M(A) - tan beta] plane. New channels becoming important at 13 and 14 TeV for low values of tan beta are characterised in terms of their kinematics and the reconstruction strategies. The effect of QCD systematics, SUSY loop effects and decays into pairs of SUSY particles on these constraints are discussed in details.
A common lore has arisen that beyond the Standard Model (BSM) particles, which can be searched for at current and proposed experiments, should have flavorless or mostly third-generation interactions with Standard Model quarks. This theoretical bias severely limits the exploration of BSM phenomenology, and is especially constraining for extended Higgs sectors. Such limitations can be avoided in the context of Spontaneous Flavor Violation (SFV), a robust and UV complete framework that allows for significant couplings to any up or down-type quark, while suppressing flavor-changing neutral currents via flavor alignment. In this work we study the theory and phenomenology of extended SFV Higgs sectors with large couplings to any quark generation. We perform a comprehensive analysis of flavor and collider constraints of extended SFV Higgs sectors, and demonstrate that new Higgs bosons with large couplings to the light quarks may be found at the electroweak scale. In particular, we find that new Higgses as light as 100 GeV with order $sim$ 0.1 couplings to first or second generation quarks, which are copiously produced at LHC via quark fusion, are allowed by current constraints. Furthermore, the additional SFV Higgses can mix with the SM Higgs, providing strong theory motivation for an experimental program looking for deviations in the light quark-Higgs couplings. Our work demonstrates the importance of exploring BSM physics coupled preferentially to light quarks, and the need to further develop dedicated experimental techniques for the LHC and future colliders.
The next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model (NMSSM) with an extended Higgs sector offers one of the Higgs boson as the Standard model (SM) like Higgs with a mass around 125 GeV along with other Higgs bosons with lighter and heavier masses and not excluded by any current experiments. At the LHC, phenomenology of these non SM like Higgs bosons is very rich and considerably different from the other supersymmetric models. In this work, assuming one of the Higgs bosons to be the SM like, we revisit the mass spectrum and couplings of non SM like Higgs bosons taking into consideration all existing constraints and identify the relevant region of parameter space. The discovery potential of these non SM like Higgs bosons, apart from their masses, is guided by their couplings with gauge bosons and fermions which are very much parameter space sensitive. We evaluate the rates of productions of these non SM like Higgs bosons at the LHC for a variety of decay channels in the allowed region of the parameter space. Although bb, {tau}{tau} decay modes appear to be the most promising, it is observed that for a substantial region of parameter space the two-photon decay mode has a remarkably large rate. In this work we emphasize that this diphoton mode can be exploited to find the NMSSM Higgs signal and can also be potential avenue to distinguish the NMSSM from the MSSM. In addition, we discuss briefly the various detectable signals of these non SM Higgs bosons at the LHC.