Nonstandard Higgs Decays

TL;DR

This paper discusses the challenges and strategies for discovering nonstandard Higgs decays at colliders, emphasizing the need for new search methods due to altered decay signatures.

Contribution

It highlights the importance of developing specialized searches for nonstandard Higgs decays involving cascade processes and multi-body final states.

Findings

Nonstandard Higgs decays can evade traditional searches.

New light particles mediate cascade decays.

Detection strategies at Tevatron and LHC are proposed.

Abstract

The crucial search for the Higgs boson at future colliders is capable of discovering the Standard Model Higgs, but is not guaranteed to discover a Higgs that decays nonstandardly. Such new physics is motivated by many aspects; from experiment, by the tension between precision electroweak fits and the LEP2 direct search bound and from theory, by issues of satisfying the LEP2 bound in theories that naturally have a lighter Higgs. The consistent nonstandard Higgs scenario is that the Higgs is lighter than the LEP2 bound and is consistent with direct search limits because the dominant new decays are cascades into a multi-body final state, mediated by new light particles. The reduction in the Standard Model branching ratio implies that searches dependent on these decays can be severely weakened. Thus, it is imperative to design searches capable of discovering the new decays. Some of the possible analyses that can be performed at the Tevatron and LHC are presented. However, much work remains to see if discovery of the nonstandard Higgs at hadron colliders can be ensured.