Nonstandard Higgs Decays with Visible and Missing Energy

TL;DR

This paper explores the possibility that the Higgs boson decays via nonstandard channels involving both visible particles and missing energy, which could evade current experimental constraints and be detectable at colliders like the Tevatron and LHC.

Contribution

It introduces a framework using On-Shell Effective Theories to analyze nonstandard Higgs decays with mixed visible and missing energy, and discusses their experimental viability and detection prospects.

Findings

Nonstandard Higgs decays with visible and missing energy are allowed for ~100 GeV Higgses.

Such decays can occur in supersymmetric models and models with additional neutrinos.

Potential collider searches could discover these Higgses within existing supersymmetry topologies.

Abstract

Experimental and theoretical clues both suggest that the Higgs boson has a mass below the LEP2 lower limit of 114.4 GeV. If true, this suggests that the dominant Higgs decay is nonstandard while the production cross sections remain unmodified. We consider the possibility of nonstandard Higgs decays in the language of On-Shell Effective Theories (OSETs), and discuss a little considered class of Higgs decays, with a topology of both visible and missing energy. We study existing LEP constraints on such decays, and find that such decays would in general be allowed experimentally for ~ 100 GeV mass Higgses. Simple model realizations of these decays exist, which can occur in supersymmetric models and also in models with additional massive neutrinos. Some potential searches that can be performed at Tevatron and LHC, contained in standard supersymmetry topologies of leptons and missing energy, offer the possibility of discovering such Higgses.