Higgs Phenomenology in the Minimal $SU(3)_L\times U(1)_X$ Model

TL;DR

This paper explores the Higgs sector in a minimal 331 gauge model, revealing unique flavor-changing phenomena and deviations in Higgs couplings, with potential distinctive signatures for experimental detection.

Contribution

It introduces a minimal Higgs sector in the 331 model, analyzing flavor-changing neutral currents and predicting unique Higgs decay signatures distinct from two Higgs doublet models.

Findings

Flavor-changing neutral currents are suppressed in the alignment limit.

Standard model-like Higgs couplings show characteristic deviations.

Extra Higgs bosons can decay dominantly into flavor-violating modes.

Abstract

We investigate the phenomenology of a model based on the $SU(3)_c\times SU(3)_L\times U(1)_X$ gauge theory, the so-called 331 model. In particular, we focus on the Higgs sector of the model which is composed of three $SU(3)_L$ triplet Higgs fields, and this corresponds to the minimal form to realize phenomenologically acceptable scenario. After the spontaneous symmetry breaking $SU(3)_L\times U(1)_X\to SU(2)_L\times U(1)_Y$, our Higgs sector effectively becomes that with two $SU(2)_L$ doublet scalar fields, in which the first and the second generation quarks couple to the different Higgs doublet from that couples to the third generation quarks. This structure causes the flavour changing neutral current mediated by Higgs bosons at the tree level. By taking an alignment limit of the mass matrix for the CP-even Higgs bosons, which is naturally realized in the case with the breaking scale of $SU(3)_L\times U(1)_X$ to be much larger than that of $SU(2)_L\times U(1)_Y$, we can avoid current constraints from flavour experiments such as the $B^0$-$\bar{B}^0$ mixing even for the Higgs bosons masses being ${\cal O}(100)$ GeV. In this allowed parameter space, we clarify that a characteristic deviation in quark Yukawa couplings of the standard model-like Higgs boson is predicted, which has a different pattern from that seen in two Higgs doublet models with a softly-broken $Z_2$ symmetry. We also find that the flavour violating decay modes of the extra Higgs boson, e.g., $H/A \to tc$ and $H^\pm \to ts$ can be dominant, and they yield the important signature to distinguish our model from the two Higgs doublet models.