Prospects for light Higgs measurements at the 250 GeV ILC

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the potential for the 250 GeV International Linear Collider to detect a light, non-standard Higgs boson around 96 GeV, focusing on its decay to tau pairs within the N2HDM framework.

Contribution

It assesses the feasibility of directly observing a non-standard 96 GeV Higgs boson at the ILC, considering suppressed couplings and non-standard decay patterns.

Findings

Potential to detect the 96 GeV Higgs via tau decay channels at the ILC.

Analysis of coupling suppression effects on Higgs observability.

Feasibility of distinguishing non-standard Higgs signals from background.

Abstract

A light Higgs boson, with mass of the order of 100 GeV, is still not excluded by the existing experimental data, provided its coupling to gauge bosons is strongly suppressed compared to a SM-like Higgs boson at the same mass. Also other couplings of such a scalar could be very different from the SM predictions leading to non-standard decay paterns. Considered in the presented study is the feasibility of direct observation of the 96 GeV Higgs boson of N2HDM model with dominant decays to tau lepton pairs.