HiggsTools: BSM scalar phenomenology with new versions of HiggsBounds and HiggsSignals

TL;DR

HiggsTools unifies and extends HiggsBounds and HiggsSignals, providing a modern, user-friendly framework for comparing BSM scalar models with experimental Higgs data, including new features and improved data handling.

Contribution

The paper introduces HiggsTools, a comprehensive, modernized software framework that combines and enhances HiggsBounds and HiggsSignals for BSM scalar phenomenology.

Findings

Enhanced handling of BSM particle clusters and mass uncertainties.

Extended database of Higgs-boson pair and doubly-charged Higgs searches.

Improved user interface and data integration for model predictions.

Abstract

The codes HiggsBounds and HiggsSignals compare model predictions of BSM models with extended scalar sectors to searches for additional scalars and to measurements of the detected Higgs boson at 125 GeV. We present a unification and extension of the functionalities provided by both codes into the new HiggsTools framework. The codes have been re-written in modern C++ with native Python and Mathematica interfaces for easy interactive use. We discuss the user interface for providing model predictions, now part of the new sub-library HiggsPredictions, which also provides access to many cross sections and branching ratios for reference models such as the SM. HiggsBounds now implements experimental limits purely through json data files, can better handle clusters of BSM particles of similar masses (even for complicated search topologies), and features an improved handling of mass uncertainties. Moreover, it now contains an extended list of Higgs-boson pair production searches and doubly-charged Higgs boson searches. In HiggsSignals, the treatment of different types of measurements has been unified, both in the $\chi^2$ computation and in the data file format used to implement experimental results.