We explore the Higgs sector of the NMSSM in the limit when the Peccei--Quinn symmetry is exact or only slightly broken. In this case the Higgs spectrum has a hierarchical structure which is caused by the stability of the physical vacuum. We find a strong correlation between the parameters of the NMSSM if $kappa=0$ or $kappalesssim lambda^2$. It allows one to distinguish the NMSSM with exact or softly broken PQ-symmetry from the MSSM even when extra scalar and pseudoscalar Higgs states escape direct detection.
Physics beyond the Standard Model (SM) may manifest itself as small deviations from the SM predictions for Higgs signal strengths at 125 GeV. Then, a plausible and interesting possibility is that the Higgs sector is extended and at the weak scale there appears an additional Higgs boson weakly coupled to the SM sector. Combined with the LEP excess in $e^+e^-to Z(hto bbar b)$, the diphoton excess around 96 GeV recently reported by CMS may suggest such a possibility. We examine if those LEP and CMS excesses can be explained simultaneously by a singlet-like Higgs boson in the general next-to-minimal supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM). Higgs mixing in the NMSSM relies on the singlet coupling to the MSSM Higgs doublets and the higgsino mass parameter, and thus is subject to the constraints on these supersymmetric parameters. We find that the NMSSM can account for both the LEP and CMS excesses at 96 GeV while accommodating the observed 125 GeV SM-like Higgs boson. Interestingly, the required mixing angles constrain the heavy doublet Higgs boson to be heavier than about 500 GeV. We also show that the viable region of mixing parameter space is considerably modified if the higgsino mass parameter is around the weak scale, mainly because of the Higgs coupling to photons induced by the charged higgsinos.
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.
We study the Higgs sector of the next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model (NMSSM) with explicit CP violation at the one-loop level, where the radiative corrections due to the quarks and squarks of the third generation are taken into account. We expect that, within a reasonable region of the parameter space of the present model, at least one of five neutral Higgs bosons may be produced at the future $e^+ e^-$ International Linear Collider (ILC) with $sqrt{s} = 500$ GeV, with cross section larger than 12 fb, 15 fb, and 1.5 fb, respectively, via the Higgs-strahlung process, the $WW$ fusion process, and the $ZZ$ fusion process. We find that the effect of the CP phase in the present model yields significant influences upon the production cross sections of the five neutral Higgs bosons. We also study the decay modes of the five neutral Higgs bosons to find that their decay widths are similarly affected by the CP phase. Some of the decay modes in the present model behave differently from those of the Standard Model.
We compute spinning four point functions in the quasi-fermionic three dimensional conformal field theory with slightly broken higher spin symmetry at finite tHooft coupling. More concretely, we obtain a formula for $langle j_s j_{tilde{0}} j_{tilde{0}} j_{tilde{0}} rangle$, where $j_s$ is a higher spin current and $j_{tilde{0}}$ is the scalar single trace operator. Our procedure consists in writing a plausible ansatz in Mellin space and using crossing, pseudo-conservation and Regge boundedness to fix all undetermined coefficients. Our method can potentially be generalised to compute all spinning four point functions in these theories.
We compute the full next-to-leading order supersymmetric (SUSY) electroweak (EW) and SUSY-QCD corrections to the decays of CP-odd NMSSM Higgs bosons into stop pairs. In our numerical analysis we also present the decay of the heavier stop into the lighter stop and an NMSSM CP-odd Higgs boson. Both the EW and the SUSY-QCD corrections are found to be significant and have to be taken into account for a proper prediction of the decay widths.