The Radial Mode of Composite Higgs Theories at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper investigates the LHC's ability to detect the scalar radial excitation in composite and twin Higgs models, analyzing current bounds and future prospects at the HL-LHC, especially via Higgs pair decay channels.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of the LHC and HL-LHC sensitivity to the radial Higgs excitation in composite and twin Higgs models, including current bounds and future reach.

Findings

Current bounds set the radial Higgs mass at ≥0.93-1.13 TeV.

HL-LHC can probe masses up to 1.8-2.2 TeV for composite models.

Twin Higgs radial state reach is about 1.2 TeV with HL-LHC.

Abstract

We examine the potential of the LHC to observe the scalar radial excitation present in extensions of the standard model where the Higgs boson is a pseudo Nambu Golstone boson. These include composite Higgs models as well as the twin Higgs model. These states can be light enough to be seen at the LHC, potentially resulting in additional clues about the nature of the Higgs sector. We present the current status of LHC bounds as well as the future prospects for the the high luminosity LHC (HL-LHC). We identify the most sensitive channels as those where the radial state decays to a pair of Higgs bosons, especially at the high luminosity stage. For the minimal composite Higgs models we study, we make use of the LHC Run 2 data with ${\cal L}=138~{\rm fb}^{-1}$ to extract the $2\sigma $ mass bounds $m_\sigma\geq (0.93-1.13)~$TeV, where the values on the interval depend on the parameters of the model. We show that the reach of the HL-LHC for these cases is $m_\sigma\geq (1.8-2.2)~TeV$, with ${\cal L}=3000~{\rm fb}^{-1}$. For the twin Higgs model radial state, the current bounds are set by Higgs coupling measurements, while for the HL-LHC we obtain the reach $m_\sigma\geq 1.2~$TeV, corresponding to the lowest symmetry breaking scale allowed by current data.