Entanglement Maximization and Mirror Symmetry in Two-Higgs-Doublet Models

TL;DR

This paper explores how maximizing entanglement in Higgs boson scatterings within a two-Higgs-doublet model reveals underlying symmetries, spontaneous symmetry breaking, and implications for Higgs alignment and dark sectors.

Contribution

It demonstrates that entanglement maximization imposes specific global symmetries and spontaneous symmetry breaking patterns in 2HDM, linking quantum information concepts to particle physics symmetries.

Findings

Maximal entanglement leads to a U(2)×U(2) symmetry in the model.

Spontaneous symmetry breaking results in Higgs alignment and Goldstone bosons.

A Z2 symmetry and a mirror dark sector are required for consistency.

Abstract

We consider 2-to-2 scatterings of Higgs bosons in a CP-conserving two-Higgs-doublet model (2HDM) and study the implication of maximizing the entanglement in the flavor space, where the two doublets $\Phi_a$, $a=1,2$, can be viewed as a qubit: $\Phi_1=|0\rangle$ and $\Phi_2=|1\rangle$. More specifically, we compute the scattering amplitudes for $\Phi_a \Phi_b \to \Phi_c \Phi_d$ and require the outgoing flavor entanglement to be maximal for a full product basis such as the computational basis, which consists of $\{|00\rangle,|01\rangle,|10\rangle,|11\rangle\}$. In the unbroken phase and turning off the gauge interactions, entanglement maximization results in the appearance of an $U(2)\times U(2)$ global symmetry among the quartic couplings, which in general is broken softly by the mass terms. Interestingly, once the Higgs bosons acquire vacuum expectation values, maximal entanglement enforces an exact $U(2) \times U(2)$ symmetry, which is spontaneously broken to $U(1)\times U(1)$. As a byproduct, this gives rise to Higgs alignment as well as to the existence of 6 massless Nambu-Goldstone bosons. The $U(2)\times U(2)$ symmetry can be gauged to lift the massless Goldstones, while maintaining maximal entanglement demands the presence of a discrete $\mathrm{Z}_2$ symmetry interchanging the two gauge sectors. The model is custodially invariant in the scalar sector, and the inclusion of fermions requires a mirror dark sector, related to the standard one by the $\mathrm{Z}_2$ symmetry.