Searching for Additional Higgs Bosons via Higgs Cascades

TL;DR

This paper proposes a new search strategy for additional Higgs bosons in a type I two Higgs doublet model at the LHC, focusing on a specific decay chain that can probe currently unconstrained parameter space.

Contribution

It introduces the process $gg o H o A Z o ZZh$ as a discovery mode for extended Higgs sectors and analyzes promising decay channels for detection.

Findings

The process can effectively probe the unconstrained parameter space at $ aneta > 5$.

Several decay modes, including $ ext{4 leptons + 2 b jets}$ and $ ext{2 leptons + jets + 2 b jets}$, are identified as most sensitive.

The study highlights potential discovery channels for extended Higgs sectors at the LHC.

Abstract

The discovery of a 125 GeV Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider strongly motivates direct searches for additional Higgs bosons. In a type I two Higgs doublet model there is a large region of parameter space at $\tan\beta > 5$ that is currently unconstrained experimentally. We show that the process $gg \to H \to A Z \to ZZh$ can probe this region, and can be the discovery mode for an extended Higgs sector at the LHC. We analyze 9 promising decay modes for the $ZZh$ state, and we find that the most sensitive final states are $\ell\ell\ell\ell bb$, $\ell\ell jjbb$, $\ell\ell\nu\nu\gamma\gamma$ and $\ell\ell\ell\ell +{}$missing energy.