Probing the CP-even Higgs Sector via $H_3\to H_2H_1$ in the Natural NMSSM

TL;DR

This paper explores the natural NMSSM Higgs sector, highlighting the potential to discover the heavy $H_3$ Higgs via its decay into $H_1H_2$, with promising signals at the 14 TeV LHC, especially for a lighter $H_1$ around 98 GeV.

Contribution

The study identifies a distinctive Higgs decay channel in the natural NMSSM and demonstrates its detectability at the LHC using jet substructure techniques.

Findings

$H_2$ is the SM-like Higgs with a lighter $H_1$ within $[m_{H_2}/2,m_{H_2}]$

$H_3$ has a mass around 300 GeV and decays to $H_1H_2$ with large branching ratio

All three Higgs bosons can be discovered at the 14 TeV LHC via specific decay channels.

Abstract

After the discovery of a Standard Model (SM) like Higgs boson, naturalness strongly favors the next to the Minimal Supersymmetric SM (NMSSM). In this letter, we point out that the most natural NMSSM predicts the following CP-even Higgs $H_i$ sector: (A) $H_2$ is the SM-like Higgs boson with mass pushed-upward by a lighter $H_1$ with mass overwhelmingly within $[m_{H_2}/2,m_{H_2}]$; (B) $m_{H_3}\simeq 2\mu/\sin2\beta\gtrsim300$ GeV; (C) $H_3$ has a significant coupling to top quarks and can decay to $H_1H_2$ with a large branching ratio. Using jet substructure we show that all the three Higgs bosons can be discovered via $gg\to H_3 \to H_1H_2\to b\bar b \ell\nu jj$ at the 14 TeV LHC. Especially, the LEP-LHC scenario with $H_1\simeq98$ GeV has a very good discovery potential.