Displaced Higgs production in type III seesaw

TL;DR

This paper explores unique Higgs boson signatures involving displaced vertices predicted by the type III seesaw mechanism and supersymmetry, highlighting potential observable signals at the LHC with specific decay chains and cross-sections.

Contribution

It identifies novel Higgs production signatures with displaced vertices in type III seesaw and supersymmetric models, providing detailed predictions for collider observables.

Findings

Displaced Higgs signatures with b jets and charged tracks are predicted.

Production cross-section for these signatures can be around 0.5 fb at 1 TeV.

Cascade decay processes could be detectable at early LHC runs.

Abstract

We point out that the type III seesaw mechanism introducing fermion triplets predicts peculiar Higgs boson signatures of displaced vertices with two b jets and one or two charged particles which can be cleanly identified. In a supersymmetric theory, the scalar partner of the fermion triplet contains a neutral dark matter candidate which is almost degenerate with its charged components. A Higgs boson can be produced together with such a dark matter triplet in the cascade decay chain of a strongly produced squark or gluino. When the next lightest supersymmetric particle (NLSP) is bino/wino-like, there appears a Higgs boson associated with two charged tracks of a charged lepton and a heavy charged scalar at a displacement larger than about 1 mm. The corresponding production cross-section is about 0.5 fb for the squark/gluino mass of 1 TeV. In the case of the stau NLSP, it decays mainly to a Higgs boson and a heavy charged scalar whose decay length is larger than 0.1 mm for the stau NLSP mixing with the left-handed stau smaller than 0.3. As this process can have a large cascade production $\sim 2$ pb for the squark/gluino mass $\sim 1$ TeV, one may be able to probe it at the early stage of the LHC experiment.