Dynamical Higgs Field Alignment in the NMSSM

TL;DR

This paper proposes a dynamical mechanism for Higgs field alignment in the NMSSM, driven by large couplings near the GUT scale, which can explain the observed SM-like Higgs behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a novel dynamical alignment scenario in the NMSSM based on large Higgs-singlet couplings near the GUT scale, linked to Higgs compositeness.

Findings

Alignment achieved for large Higgs-singlet couplings near GUT scale

Higgs fields may be composite with a scale close to GUT

Phenomenological properties consistent with SM Higgs observations

Abstract

Experimental probes of the recently discovered Higgs boson show that its behavior is close to that of the Standard Model (SM) Higgs particle. Extensions of the SM which include extra Higgs bosons are constrained by these observations, implying either the decoupling of the heavy non-standard Higgs particles or the realization of alignment, associated with vanishing mixing of the SM-like Higgs boson with the non-standard ones. Quite generally, alignment is not enforced by symmetry considerations and hence it is interesting to look for dynamical ways in which this condition can be realized. We show that this is possible in the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM), in which alignment is achieved for values of the coupling of the Higgs fields to the singlet field that become large close to the Grand Unification (GUT) scale. This, in turn, can be explained by the composite nature of the Higgs fields, with a compositeness scale close to the GUT scale. In this article we present this dynamical scenario and discuss its phenomenological properties.