Early Higgs Boson Discovery in Non-minimal Higgs Sectors

TL;DR

This paper explores early detection prospects of non-minimal Higgs sectors at the LHC, focusing on heavy Higgs decays to lighter Higgs and heavy particles, with detailed analysis of specific decay channels.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of Higgs boson signals in non-minimal models, especially two Higgs doublet models, and demonstrates potential early discovery channels at the LHC.

Findings

Potential 4.5 sigma signal for heavy Higgs at 330 GeV with 1 fb^{-1}

Analysis of decay channels A→hZ and h→WW in non-minimal Higgs models

Parameter space interpretation for Higgs discovery or exclusion

Abstract

Particle physics models with more than one Higgs boson occur in many frameworks for physics beyond the standard model, including supersymmetry, technicolor, composite Higgs, and "little Higgs" models. If the Higgs sector contains couplings stronger than electroweak gauge couplings, there will be heavy Higgs particles that decay to lighter Higgs particles plus heavy particles such as $W$, $Z$, and $t$. This motivates searches for final states involving multiple $W$, $Z$, $t$, and $\bar{b}b$ pairs. A two Higgs doublet model with custodial symmetry is a useful simplified model to describe many of these signals. The model can be parameterized by the physical Higgs masses and the mixing angles $\al$ and $\be$, so discovery or exclusion in this parameter space has a straightforward physical interpretation. We illustrate this with a detailed analysis of the process $gg \to A$ followed by $A \to h Z$ and $h \to WW$. For $m_{A} \simeq 330\GeV$, $m_{h} \simeq 200\GeV$ we can get a $4.5\si$ signal with 1 fb${}^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity at the Large Hadron Collider.