Higgs pair signal enhanced in the 2HDM with two degenerate 125 GeV Higgs bosons

TL;DR

This paper explores how the 2HDM with two nearly degenerate 125 GeV Higgs bosons can significantly enhance Higgs pair production signals at the LHC, especially in the $b\bar{b}\gamma\gamma$ channel, under various constraints.

Contribution

It demonstrates that certain trilinear Higgs couplings in the 2HDM can be larger than SM values, leading to a greatly increased Higgs pair production rate and potential observability at the LHC.

Findings

Enhanced $b\bar{b}\gamma\gamma$ rate due to degenerate Higgs bosons.

Some trilinear couplings exceed SM values by an order.

Potential for 5$\sigma$$ discovery at 14 TeV LHC with 3000 fb$^{-1}$.

Abstract

We discuss a scenario of the type-II 2HDM in which the $b\bar{b}\gamma\gamma$ rate of the Higgs pair production is enhanced due to the two nearly degenerate 125 GeV Higgs bosons ($h$, $H$). Considering various theoretical and experimental constraints, we figure out the allowed ranges of the trilinear couplings of these two Higgs bosons and calculate the signal rate of $b\bar{b}\gamma\gamma$ from the productions of Higgs pairs ($hh$, $hH$, $HH$) at the LHC. We find that in the allowed parameter space some trilinear Higgs couplings can be larger than the SM value by an order and the production rate of $b\bar{b}\gamma\gamma$ can be greatly enhanced. We also consider a "decoupling" benchmark point where the light CP-even Higgs has a SM-like cubic self-coupling while other trilinear couplings are very small. With a detailed simulation on the $b\bar{b}\gamma\gamma$ signal and backgrounds, we find that in such a "decoupling" scenario the $hh$ and $hH$ channels can jointly enhance the statistical significance to 5$\sigma$ at 14 TeV LHC with an integrated luminosity of 3000 fb$^{-1}$.