Effective Higgs Vertices in the generic MSSM

TL;DR

This paper analyzes chirally enhanced corrections to Higgs vertices in the general MSSM, including non-holomorphic A'-terms, revealing new tan(beta) enhanced effects and their implications for flavor-changing neutral Higgs couplings.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive diagrammatic renormalization of Higgs vertices in the MSSM beyond the decoupling limit, including effects of A'-terms and flavor structure, with new insights into tan(beta) enhancements.

Findings

Identification of tan(beta) enhanced contributions involving A-terms.

Discovery of new tan(beta) effects requiring flavor-diagonal non-holomorphic corrections.

Analysis of decoupling effects and their impact on Higgs couplings.

Abstract

In this article we consider chirally enhanced corrections to Higgs vertices in the most general MSSM. We include the contributions stemming from bilinear-terms, from the trilinear A-terms and their non-holomorphic analogues, the A'-terms, which couple squarks to the "wrong" Higgs field. We perform a consistent renormalization of the Higgs vertices beyond the decoupling limit M_SUSY->infinity, using a purely diagrammatic approach. The cancellation of the different contributions in and beyond the decoupling limit is discussed and the possible size of decoupling effects which occur if the SUSY particles are not much heavier than the electroweak-scale are examined. In the decoupling limit we recover the results obtained in the effective-field-theory approach. For the non-holomorphic A'-terms we find the well known $\tan\beta$ enhancement in the down-sector similar to the one for terms proportional to mu. Due to the a priori generic flavor structure of these trilinear terms large flavour-changing neutral Higgs couplings can be induced. We also discover new tan(beta) enhanced contributions involving the usual holomorphic A-terms, which were not discussed before in the literature. These corrections occur only if also flavor-diagonal non-holomorphic corrections to the Higgs couplings are present. This reflects the fact that the A-terms, and also the chirality-changing self-energies, are physical quantities and cannot be absorbed into renormalization constants.