LHC Constraints on a Higgs Partner from an Extended Color Sector

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the LHC's potential to discover or constrain a heavy scalar boson in the renormalizable coloron model, focusing on how future 14 TeV data can reveal properties of this new state and its relation to the 125 GeV Higgs.

Contribution

It provides projected LHC sensitivity to the heavy scalar in the coloron model, considering various scenarios with spectator fermions and scalar mixing.

Findings

LHC at 14 TeV can detect scalars below 1 TeV in most model scenarios.

Upcoming searches will significantly constrain the heavy scalar's properties.

Sensitivity depends on the mixing between doublet and singlet scalars.

Abstract

We discuss the properties and LHC phenomenology of a potentially discoverable heavy scalar boson ($s$) that arises in the context of the renormalizable coloron model; the model also contains a light scalar, $h$, identifiable with the 125 GeV state discovered by the LHC. These two scalar mass eigenstates are admixtures of a weak doublet gauge eigenstate and a weak singlet gauge eigenstate. A previous study set exclusion limits on the heavy $s$ scalar, using the stability of the scalar potential, unitarity, electroweak precision tests, LHC searches for the 125 GeV Higgs; it also briefly discussed the $\sqrt{s} = 7,8$ TeV LHC searches for a heavy Higgs. In this work, we show how the projected LHC sensitivity at $\sqrt{s} = 14$ TeV to the presence of a heavy Higgs and to the detailed properties of the 125 GeV Higgs will further constrain the properties of the new heavy $s$ scalar. Since the renormalizable coloron model may contain spectator fermions to remove anomalies, we examine several representative scenarios with different numbers of spectator fermions. Our results are summarized in plots that overlay the current exclusion limits on the $s$ boson with the projected sensitivity of the $\sqrt{s} = 14$ TeV LHC to the new state. We find that the upcoming LHC searches should be sensitive to an $s$ scalar of mass less than 1 TeV for essentially all of the model parameter space in which the $h$ state differs from the Higgs boson of the SM. More precisely, unless the mixing between the weak doublet and weak singlet gauge-eigenstate scalars is zero, the 14 TeV LHC will be sensitive to the presence of the non-standard heavy $s$ state that is characteristic of the renormalizable coloron model.