Buried Higgs

TL;DR

This paper proposes an extension of the MSSM where the Higgs decays predominantly into four gluons via a light pseudo-Goldstone boson, making it difficult to detect at LEP and LHC but predicting observable partner particles.

Contribution

It introduces a model where the Higgs is a pseudo-Goldstone boson with a dominant cascade decay into four gluons, altering standard Higgs phenomenology.

Findings

Higgs can be as light as 78 GeV without detection at LEP.

The dominant decay mode is h -> eta eta -> 4 gluons.

Predicted new particles should be observable at the LHC.

Abstract

We present an extension of the MSSM where the dominant decay channel of the Higgs boson is a cascade decay into a four-gluon final state. In this model the Higgs is a pseudo-Goldstone boson of a broken global symmetry SU(3)-> SU(2). Both the global symmetry breaking and electroweak symmetry breaking are radiatively induced. The global symmetry breaking pattern also implies the existence of a light (few GeV) pseudo-Goldstone boson eta which is a singlet under the standard model gauge group. The h -> eta eta branching fraction is large, and typically dominates over the standard h -> b b decay. The dominant decay of eta is into two gluons, while the decays to photons, taus or lighter standard model flavors are suppressed at the level of 10^(-4) or more. With h-> 4 jets as the dominant decay, the Higgs could be as light as 78 GeV without being detected at LEP, while detection at the LHC is extremely challenging. However many of the super- and global symmetry partners of the standard model particles should be easily observable at the LHC. Furthermore, the LHC should be able to observe a "wrong Higgs" that is a 300-400 GeV heavy Higgs-like particle with suppressed couplings to W and Z that by itself does not account for electroweak precision observables and the unitarity of WW scattering. At the same time, the true Higgs is deeply buried in the QCD background.