Uplifted supersymmetric Higgs region

TL;DR

This paper explores a unique region in the MSSM parameter space where down-type fermion masses are generated via loop-induced couplings, leading to distinctive Higgs spectrum features and decay patterns.

Contribution

It identifies a novel supersymmetric Higgs region where the down-type Higgs does not get a tree-level VEV and is instead loop-induced, affecting Higgs phenomenology.

Findings

Existence of a parameter space with loop-induced down-type fermion masses.

Presence of nearly degenerate heavy Higgs states decaying into tau pairs.

Distinctive Higgs spectrum with a light standard-like Higgs.

Abstract

We show that the parameter space of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model includes a region where the down-type fermion masses are generated by the loop-induced couplings to the up-type Higgs doublet. In this region the down-type Higgs doublet does not acquire a vacuum expectation value at tree level, and has sizable couplings in the superpotential to the tau leptons and bottom quarks. Besides a light standard-like Higgs boson, the Higgs spectrum includes the nearly degenerate states of a heavy spin-0 doublet which can be produced through their couplings to the $b$ quark and decay predominantly into \tau^+\tau^- or \tau\nu.