Unravelling an extended quark sector through multiple Higgs production?

Abstract

In many new physics scenarios, the particle content of the Standard Model is extended and the Higgs couplings are modified, sometimes without affecting single Higgs production. We analyze two models with additional quarks. In these models, we compute double Higgs production from gluon fusion exactly at leading order, and present analytical results in the heavy-quark mass approximation. The experimental bounds from precision electroweak measurements and from the measured rate of single Higgs production combine to give significant restrictions for the allowed deviation of the double Higgs production rate from the Standard Model prediction as well as on the branching ratio for the Higgs decay into photons. The two models analyzed eventually present a similar Higgs phenomenology as the Standard Model. We connect this result to the magnitude of the dimension six operators contributing to the gluon-fusion Higgs production.