Higgs Bosons in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model with Explicit CP Violation

TL;DR

This paper investigates how explicit CP violation in the Higgs sector of the minimal supersymmetric standard model affects the Higgs mass spectrum, couplings, and collider phenomenology, revealing significant mixing and modified detection strategies.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the Higgs mass spectrum and couplings under explicit CP violation, including two-loop corrections, and explores implications for collider searches.

Findings

Neutral Higgs bosons can strongly mix due to CP violation.

Tree-level couplings to fermions and gauge bosons are significantly altered.

Production rates of the lightest Higgs are affected, impacting collider detection strategies.

Abstract

We study the Higgs-boson mass spectrum of the minimal supersymmetric standard model, in which the tree-level CP invariance of the Higgs potential is broken explicitly by loop effects of soft-CP-violating Yukawa interactions related to scalar quarks of the third generation. The analysis is performed by considering the CP-non-invariant renormalization-group improved effective potential through next-to-leading order that includes leading logarithms due to two-loop Yukawa and QCD corrections. We find that the three neutral Higgs particles predicted by the theory may strongly mix with one another, thereby significantly modifying their tree-level couplings to fermions and to the $W^\pm$ and Z bosons. We analyze the phenomenological consequences of such a minimal supersymmetric scenario of explicit CP violation on the production rates of the lightest Higgs particle, and discuss strategies for its potential discovery at high-energy colliders.