Abstract
While the properties of the signal that was discovered in the Higgs searches at the LHC are consistent so far with the Higgs boson of the Standard Model (SM), it is crucial to investigate to what extent other interpretations that may correspond to very different underlying physics are compatible with the current results. We use the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM) as a well-motivated theoretical framework with a sufficiently rich Higgs phenomenology to address this question, making use of the public tools HiggsBounds and HiggsSignals in order to take into account comprehensive experimental information on both the observed signal and on the existing limits from Higgs searches at LEP, the TeVatron and the LHC. We find that besides the decoupling limit resulting in a single light state with SM-like properties, several other configurations involving states lighter or quasi-degenerate with the one at about 125 GeV turn out to give a competitive fit to the Higgs data and other existing constraints. We discuss the phenomenology and possible future experimental tests of those scenarios, and compare the features of specific scenarios chosen as examples with those arising from a more global fit.
Highlights
After the discovery of a signal with a mass of about 125 GeV in the Higgs searches at the LHC [1, 2], the prime goal is to identify the underlying nature of the new state and to determine the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking
In models with an extended Higgs sector the observed state would be accompanied by several other Higgs bosons, in contrast to the minimal formulation of the Standard Model (SM) where a single SU (2)L-doublet is responsible for electroweak-symmetry breaking
The region with low tan β (∼ 2) and large λ (∼ 0.6 − 0.7) is interesting in the next-to-minimal supersymmetric extension of the SM (NMSSM) parameter space: as we just mentioned, light CP-even singlets under ∼ 125 GeV appear most naturally there; the squared mass of the light-doublet Higgs state receives an F-term contribution of the form λ2v2 sin2 2β at tree-level (see e.g. Eq(2.23) of [6]), which is maximized in this regime, so that significantly smaller radiative corrections than in the minimal supersymmetric extension of the SM (MSSM) case are needed to reach the experimental value of the observed signal; the region of low tan β is ‘specific’ to the NMSSM, in the sense that current phenomenological requirements on the Higgs sector forbid it in the MSSM
Summary
After the discovery of a signal with a mass of about 125 GeV in the Higgs searches at the LHC [1, 2], the prime goal is to identify the underlying nature of the new state and to determine the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking. The NMSSM provides a well-suited and theoretically well motivated framework for investigating to what extent interpretations that go beyond the obvious case of a single light state in the decoupling limit are compatible with the latest experimental results both with respect to the properties of the observed state and to the limits obtained from Higgs searches (as well as other existing constraints) It is the purpose of the present paper to perform such an analysis. Considering that the NMSSM has a large number of parameters in the Higgs sector, it may be possible to absorb a substancial part of the higher-order corrections within a shift in parameter space In such a context, one could be concerned that large mass uncertainties might blur the phenomenology and provide unlikely spectra with undue attention. We will base our phenomenological discussion on relative χ2-differences with respect to a best-fit point, which prove to be a more robust interpretation in the given context
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