The LHC Discovery Potential of a Leptophilic Higgs

TL;DR

This paper explores a leptophilic two-Higgs-doublet model that enhances Higgs-lepton couplings, potentially improving the discovery prospects of a light Higgs boson at the LHC through novel decay channels.

Contribution

It introduces a leptophilic two-Higgs-doublet model and analyzes its collider phenomenology, highlighting new discovery channels for a light Higgs at the LHC.

Findings

Large parameter space allows enhanced Higgs-lepton couplings.

Certain decay channels significantly improve Higgs discovery potential.

Enhanced leptonic decay modes can be crucial for Higgs detection.

Abstract

In this work, we examine a two-Higgs-doublet extension of the Standard Model in which one Higgs doublet is responsible for giving mass to both up- and down-type quarks, while a separate doublet is responsible for giving mass to leptons. We examine both the theoretical and experimental constraints on the model and show that large regions of parameter space are allowed by these constraints in which the effective couplings between the lightest neutral Higgs scalar and the Standard-Model leptons are substantially enhanced. We investigate the collider phenomenology of such a "leptophilic" two-Higgs-doublet model and show that in cases where the low-energy spectrum contains only one light, CP-even scalar, a variety of collider processes essentially irrelevant for the discovery of a Standard Model Higgs boson (specifically those in which the Higgs boson decays directly into a charged-lepton pair) can contribute significantly to the discovery potential of a light-to-intermediate-mass (m_h < 140 GeV) Higgs boson at the LHC.