Stability and symmetry breaking in the general n-Higgs-doublet model

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the stability, symmetry breaking, and mass spectra of the general n-Higgs-doublet model using a bilinear formalism to simplify the complex potential landscape.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of stability and symmetry breaking in the n-Higgs-doublet model, explicitly deriving Higgs mass matrices within a simplified formalism.

Findings

Explicit conditions for potential stability

Mass matrices for physical Higgs bosons derived

Systematic avoidance of gauge degrees of freedom

Abstract

For potentials with n-Higgs-boson doublets stability, electroweak symmetry breaking, and the stationarity equations are discussed in detail. This is done within the bilinear formalism which simplifies the investigation, in particular since irrelevant gauge degrees of freedom are systematically avoided. For the case that the potential leads to the physically relevant electroweak symmetry breaking the mass matrices of the physical Higgs bosons are given explicitly.