Search for doubly charged Higgs bosons through vector boson fusion at the LHC and beyond

Abstract

Production and decays of doubly charged Higgs bosons at the LHC and future hadron colliders triggered by a vector boson fusion mechanism are discussed in the context of the minimal left-right symmetric model. Our analysis is based on the Higgs boson mass spectrum compatible with available constraints which include flavor changing neutral current (FCNC) effects and vacuum stability of the scalar potential. Though the parity breaking scale ${v}_{R}$ is large ($\ensuremath{\sim}$ few TeV) and scalar masses which contribute to FCNC effects are even larger, a consistent Higgs boson mass spectrum still allows us to keep doubly charged scalar masses below 1 TeV which is an interesting situation for LHC and future circular collider (FCC). We have shown that the allowed Higgs boson mass spectrum constrains the splittings (${M}_{{H}_{1}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}}\ensuremath{-}{M}_{{H}_{1}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}}$), closing the possibility of ${H}_{1}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{W}_{1}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}{H}_{1}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}$ decays. Assuming that doubly charged Higgs bosons decay predominantly into a pair of same-sign charged leptons through the process $pp\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{H}_{1/2}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}{H}_{1/2}^{\ensuremath{\mp}\ensuremath{\mp}}jj\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{\ensuremath{\ell}}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\ell}}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\ell}}^{\ensuremath{\mp}}{\ensuremath{\ell}}^{\ensuremath{\mp}}jj$, we find that for the LHC operating at $\sqrt{s}=14\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{TeV}$ with an integrated luminosity at the level of $3000\text{ }\text{ }{\mathrm{fb}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ (HL-LHC), there is practically no chance to detect such particles at the reasonable significance level through this channel. However, at 33 TeV HE-LHC and (or) 100 TeV FCC-hh, a wide region opens up for exploring the doubly charged Higgs boson mass spectrum. In FCC-hh, the doubly charged Higgs bosons mass up to 1 TeV can be easily probed.