No Arabic abstract
In twin Higgs model, the Higgs boson mass is protected by a $Z_2$ symmetry. The $Z_2$ symmetry needs to be broken either explicitly or spontaneously to obtain misalignment between electroweak and new physics vacua. We propose a novel $Z_2$ breaking mechanism, in which the $Z_2$ is spontaneously broken by radiative corrections to the Higgs potential. Two twin Higgses with different vacua are needed, and vacuum misalignment is realized by opposite but comparable contributions from gauge and Yukawa interactions to the potential. Due to fully radiative symmetry breaking, the Higgs sector is completely determined by twin Higgs vacuum, Yukawa and gauge couplings. There are eight pseudo-Goldstone bosons: the Higgs boson, inert doublet Higgs, and three twin scalars. We show the 125 GeV Higgs mass and constraints from Higgs coupling measurements could be satisfied.
The cosmology of the Twin Higgs requires the breaking of the $mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry, but it is still an open question whether this breaking needs to be explicit. In this paper, we study how the Mirror Twin Higgs could be modified to be compatible with current cosmological constraints without explicit $mathbb{Z}_2$ breaking. We first present a simple toy model that can realize baryogenesis without explicit $mathbb{Z}_2$ breaking or reaching temperatures that would lead to domain walls. The model can also either solve the $N_{text{eff}}$ problem and bring the abundance of mirror atoms to an allowed level or provide the correct dark matter abundance. We then present another simple model that leads to mirror neutron dark matter and thus acceptable dark matter self-interactions. We also include in appendix a series of results on energy exchange between different sectors that might prove useful for other cosmological problems.
The twin Higgs mechanism is a solution to the little hierarchy problem in which the top partner is neutral under the Standard Model (SM) gauge group. The simplest mirror twin Higgs (MTH) model -- where a $mathbf{Z}_2$ symmetry copies each SM particle -- has too many relativistic degrees of freedom to be consistent with cosmological observations. We demonstrate that MTH models can have an observationally viable cosmology if the twin mass spectrum leads to twin neutrino decoupling before the SM and twin QCD phase transitions. Our solution requires the twin photon to have a mass of $sim 20$ MeV and kinetically mix with the SM photon to mediate entropy transfer from the twin sector to the SM. This twin photon can be robustly discovered or excluded by future experiments. Additionally, the residual twin degrees of freedom present in the early Universe in this scenario would be detectable by future observations of the cosmic microwave background.
Twin Higgs models are the prime illustration of neutral naturalness, where the new particles of the twin sector, gauge singlets of the Standard Model (SM), ameliorate the little hierarchy problem. In this work, we analyse phenomenological implications of the heavy Higgs of the Mirror Twin Higgs and Fraternal Twin Higgs models, when electroweak symmetry breaking is linearly realized. The most general structure of twin Higgs symmetry breaking, including explicit soft and hard breaking terms in the scalar potential, is employed. The direct and indirect searches at the LHC are used to probe the parameter space of Twin Higgs models through mixing of the heavy Higgs with the SM Higgs and decays of the heavy Higgs to the SM states. Moreover, for the Fraternal Twin Higgs, we study the production and decays of twin glueball and bottomonium states to the SM light fermions, which have interesting signatures involving displaced vertices and are potentially observable at the colliders.
The Twin Higgs scenario stabilizes the Higgs mass through an approximate global symmetry and has remained natural in the face of increasingly stringent LHC bounds on colored top partners. Two basic structural questions in this framework concern the nature of the twin hypercharge gauge symmetry and the origin of the $mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry breaking needed to achieve the correct vacuum alignment. Both questions are addressed in a simple extension of the Mirror Twin Higgs model with an exact $mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry and a scalar field that spontaneously breaks both twin hypercharge and $mathbb{Z}_2$. Due to the $mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry and an approximate $U(2)$ symmetry in the potential, a new hypercharge scalar appears in the visible sector and, like the Higgs, is a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson with a weak-scale mass. Couplings between the hypercharge scalar and matter provide a new dynamical source of twin sector fermion masses. Depending on the nature and size of these couplings, a variety of experimental signatures may arise, including quark and lepton flavor violation, neutrino masses and mixings as well as direct collider probes of the hypercharged scalar. These signals are correlated with the twin matter spectrum, which can differ dramatically from the visible one, including dynamical realizations of fraternal-like scenarios.
We investigate simple extensions of the Mirror Twin Higgs model in which the twin color gauge symmetry and the discrete $Z_2$ mirror symmetry are spontaneously broken. This is accomplished in a minimal way by introducing a single new colored triplet, sextet, or octet scalar field and its twin along with a suitable scalar potential. This spontaneous $Z_2$ breaking allows for a phenomenologically viable alignment of the electroweak vacuum, and leads to dramatic differences between the visible and mirror sectors with regard to the residual gauge symmetries at low energies, color confinement scales, and particle spectra. In particular, several of our models feature a remnant $SU(2)$ or $SO(3)$ twin color gauge symmetry with a very low confinement scale in comparison to $Lambda_{rm QCD}$. Furthermore, couplings between the colored scalar and matter provide a new dynamical source of twin fermion masses, and due to the mirror symmetry, these lead to a variety of correlated visible sector effects that can be probed through precision measurements and collider searches.