Spontaneous CP violation in the D_5-symmetric four-Higgs-doublet models

TL;DR

This paper explores the vacuum structure of a D_5-symmetric four-Higgs-doublet model, identifying conditions for spontaneous CP violation and classifying all possible vacua.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of the vacuum configurations, including real and complex solutions, and conditions for spontaneous CP violation in the 4HDM.

Findings

Some complex vacua lead to spontaneous CP violation.

A most general form of complex vacua with CP violation is identified.

Conditions for vacua to be local minima are established.

Abstract

We have constructed a four-Higgs-doublet model (4HDM) based on D_5 symmetry, and investigated in detail its full neutral vacuum structure. In the framework of explicit CP conservation in the scalar potential, we focused on whether CP symmetry can be spontaneously broken. We have provided a complete list of all possible real and complex vacua, along with the constraints on the potential parameters required for each vacuum solution to exist. We also discussed the positive definiteness conditions that the Hessian must satisfy for each vacuum to become a local minimum of the potential. The results show that, after spontaneous symmetry breaking, some of the complex vacua can lead to spontaneous CP violation in the potential, while the remaining complex vacua still preserve CP conservation. Among these complex vacua with spontaneous CP violation, there is one that can be regarded as the most general form. Furthermore, we discussed the relationship between the real and complex vacua.