Charged Higgs Mass Research Articles

Influence of new states in searches for negative gauge-Higgs couplings

In this work, we explore how constraints based on interference effects for the negative gauge-Higgs coupling scenario are affected by new physics. Models that achieve this wrong-sign gauge-Higgs coupling inevitably have new charged Higgs states. These states affect the interpretation of interference effects. We recast the ATLAS analysis for VBF Wh, showing that the previously excluded negative gauge-Higgs coupling scenario is still experimentally viable for charged Higgs masses below 370 GeV. We show that it is possible to weaken this bound further with mild tuning in the parameter space. We discuss how to further constrain the wrong-sign gauge-Higgs coupling hypothesis and point out the potential of VBF Zh to exclude this scenario in a model-independent way.

Charged Higgs-boson decays into quarks

We consider the full genuine next-to-leading order SUSY–QCD corrections to the charged Higgs decays into quarks supplemented by the NNLO corrections to the effective top and bottom Yukawa couplings. The NNLO corrections to the effective top Yukawa coupling are a new ingredient of our analysis. We arrive at an approximate NNLO prediction for MSSM charged Higgs decays after including the N4LO QCD corrections for large charged Higgs masses. The residual uncertainties are in the percent range or below, depending on the particular MSSM scenario.

Higgs-boson masses and mixings in the MSSM with CP violation and heavy SUSY particles

We calculate the Higgs-boson mass spectrum and the corresponding mixing of the Higgs states in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM). We assume a mass-hierarchy with heavy SUSY particles and light Higgs bosons. To investigate this scenario, we employ an effective-field-theory approach with a low-energy Two-Higgs-Doublet Model (2HDM) where both Higgs doublets couple to right-handed up- as well as right-handed down-type fermions. We perform a one-loop matching of the MSSM to the 2HDM and evolve the parameters to the low energy scale by exploiting two-loop renormalization group equations, taking the complex parameters into account. For the calculation of the pole mass, we compare three different options: one suitable for large charged Higgs mass, one for low charged Higgs mass, and one approximation that interpolates between these scenarios. The phase dependence of the mass of the lightest neutral Higgs boson can be sizeable, i.e. of the order of a couple of GeV depending on the scenario. In addition, we discuss the CP composition of the neutral Higgs bosons.

Current bounds on the type-Z Z3 three-Higgs-doublet model

Type-Z models, where charged leptons, up type quarks, and down type quarks each couple to a different scalar, are only possible when there are three or more Higgs doublets. We consider the Type-Z three Higgs doublet model imposed by a softly broken $Z_3$ symmetry. We take into account all theoretical and experimental constraints, highlighting the importance of perturbative unitarity and bounded from below conditions that we develop here, and which have a strong impact on $B \rightarrow X_s \gamma$. Since there can be cancellations between the two charged Higgs in $B \rightarrow X_s \gamma$ (and in $h \rightarrow \gamma \gamma$), the lower bounds obtained on the charged Higgs masses are alleviated. We also discuss in detail the important physical differences between exact alignment and approximate alignment, and present some useful benchmark points.

Laser-assisted charged Higgs pair production in Inert Higgs Doublet Model (IHDM)

The production of a pair of charged Higgs bosons from e+e− annihilation in the presence of a circularly polarized laser field is investigated in Inert Higgs doublet Model (IHDM) at e+e− colliders. We have derived the analytical expression for the laser-assisted differential cross section by using the Dirac-Volkov formalism at leading order including the Z and γ diagrams. Since the laser-free cross section of this process depends, in the lowest order, only on the mass of the charged Higgs boson and the energy of the center of mass, we have analyzed the dependence of the total laser-assisted cross section on these parameters and also on the laser parameters such as the number of photons exchanged, the laser field intensity and its frequency. The results found indicate that the electromagnetic field decreases the order of magnitude of the total cross section as much as the laser field intensity increases or by decreasing its frequency. Moreover, it becomes high for low charged Higgs masses and low center of mass energies.

Prospects for light charged scalars in a three-Higgs-doublet model with Z3 symmetry

The stringent constraints from the direct searches for exotic scalars at the LHC as well as indirect bounds from flavor physics measurements have imposed severe restrictions on the parameter space of new physics models featuring extended Higgs sectors. In the Type-II 2HDM, this implies a lower bound on the charged Higgs masses of $\cal O$(600 GeV). In this work we analyze the phenomenology of a Z3HDM in the alignment limit focusing on the impact of flavor physics constraints on its parameter space. We show that the couplings of the two charged Higgs bosons in this model feature an additional suppression factor compared to Type-II 2HDM. This gives rise to a significant relaxation of the flavor physics constraints in this model, allowing the charged Higgs masses to be as low as $\cal O$(200 GeV). We also consider the constraints coming from precision electroweak observables and the observed diphoton decay rate of the 125 GeV Higgs boson at the LHC. The bounds coming from the direct searches of nonstandard Higgs bosons at the LHC, particularly those from resonance searches in the ditau channel, prove to be very effective in constraining this scenario further.

Emergent 2HDM in the Low-Skiba-Smith little Higgs model: Musings from flavor and electroweak physics

The low energy effective theory ($\sim$ TeV) of the little-Higgs model with $SU(6)/Sp(6)$, as proposed by Low, Skiba and Smith (LSS), exhibits a two-Higgs doublet model (2HDM) structure. The symmetry dictates interesting Yukawa patterns, translating to non-trivial fermion couplings with both of the Higgs doublets. The couplings of the scalars with the fermions can induce flavor changing neutral currents (FCNC), which get constraints from flavor physics observables such as BR$(B\rightarrow X_s\gamma)$, $B_s - \bar{B}_s$ mixing etc. The precision measurement of $Z b \bar{b}$ vertex, the top and Higgs mass along with other Higgs coupling measurements at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) also enforce severe restrictions on the LSS model. Direct LHC search results of beyond the Standard Model (BSM) particles also impose bounds on the masses. We probe the LSS model in view of the above constraints through a random scan in the multi-dimensional parameter space. We observe, on contrary to the general 2HDM scenario, the emergent 2HDM from the LSS model is less constrained from the flavor data and the $Z b \bar{b}$ measurement but is severely constrained form the electroweak (EW) searches at the LHC. From the flavor data and $Z b \bar{b}$, we find that the charged Higgs mass is relaxed with $\tan\beta$ being restricted to $0.5-5$, whereas the charged Higgs mass is pushed to larger than 1 TeV along with $\tan\beta$ being further restricted to $< 3$ when the LHC bounds are incorporated.

Same-sign charged Higgs boson pair production in bosonic decay channels at the HL-LHC and HE-LHC

Same-sign charged Higgs pair production via vector-boson scattering is a useful probe of the mass spectrum among the heavier scalar, pseudoscalar, and charged Higgs bosons in two-Higgs-doublet models. It has been shown that the production cross section scales as the square of the mass difference $\Delta m = (m_{H^0} - m_{A^0})$ in the alignment limit $(\cos(\beta - \alpha)=0)$. We study the potential measurement of this same-sign charged Higgs pair production at the high-luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) and the proposed 27 TeV $pp$ collider, with emphasis in the decay channel $H^\pm H^\pm \to (W^\pm A^0 ) (W^\pm A^0)$, which is in general the dominant mode when the charged Higgs mass is above the $W^\pm A^0$ threshold. We also examine the current allowed parameter space taking into account the theoretical constraints on the model, the electroweak precision measurements, $B$ decays, and direct searches in the $H^\pm \to \tau^\pm \nu_\tau$ and $H^\pm \to W ^\pm A^0 \to (\ell^\pm\nu_{\ell} ) (\mu \mu)$.

QCD corrections to in Type-I THDM at electron positron colliders * * Supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11775211, 11535002) and the CAS Center for Excellence in Particle Physics (CCEPP)

We investigate in detail the charged Higgs production associated with a W boson at electron-positron colliders within the framework of the Type-I two-Higgs-doublet model (THDM). We calculate the integrated cross section at the LO and analyze the dependence of the cross section on the THDM parameters and the colliding energy in a benchmark scenario of the input parameters of the Higgs sector. The numerical results show that the integrated cross section is sensitive to the charged Higgs mass, especially in the vicinity of at a collider, and decreases consistently with the increase of in the low region. The peak in the colliding energy distribution of the cross section arises from the resonance of the loop integrals, and it moves towards the low colliding energy with the increase of . We also study the two-loop NLO QCD corrections to both the integrated cross section and the angular distribution of the charged Higgs boson and find that the QCD relative correction is also sensitive to the charged Higgs mass and strongly depends on the final-state phase space. For , the QCD relative correction at a collider varies in the range of [-10%, 11%] as increases from 150 to 400 GeV.

Cornering Spontaneous CP Violation with Charged-Higgs-Boson Searches

Decades of precision measurements have firmly established the Kobayashi-Maskawa phase as the dominant source of the charge-parity (CP) violation observed in weak quark decays. However, it is still unclear whether CP violation is explicitly encoded in complex Yukawa matrices or instead stems from spontaneous symmetry breaking with underlying CP-conserving Yukawa and Higgs sectors. Here we study the latter possibility for the case of a generic two-Higgs-doublet model. We find that theoretical constraints limit the ratio t_{β} of the vacuum expectation values (vevs) to the range 0.22≤t_{β}≤4.5 and imply the upper bounds M_{H^{±}}≤435 GeV, M_{H_{2}^{0}}≤485 GeV and M_{H_{3}^{0}}≤545 GeV for the charged and extra neutral Higgs masses. We derive lower bounds on charged-Higgs couplings to bottom quarks which provide a strong motivation to study the nonstandard production and decay signatures pp→qbH^{±}(→q^{'}b) with all flavors q,q^{'}=u, c, t in the search for the charged Higgs boson. We further present a few benchmark scenarios with interesting discovery potential in collider analyses.

Precision unification and Higgsino dark matter in GUT scale supersymmetry

Even if the concerns related to the naturalness of the electroweak scale are repressed, the Higgs mass and stability of the electroweak vacuum do not allow arbitrarily large supersymmetry breaking scale, $M_S$, in the minimal models with split or high-scale supersymmetry. We show that $M_S$ can be raised to the GUT scale if the theory below $M_S$ contains a Higgs doublet, a pair of TeV scale Higgsino and widely separated gauginos in addition to the Standard Model particles. The presence of wino and gluino below ${\cal O}(100)$ TeV leads to precision unification of the gauge couplings consistent with the current limits on the proton lifetime. Wino, at this scale, renders the Higgsino as pseudo-Dirac dark matter which in turn evades the existing constraints from the direct detection experiments. Bino mass scale is required to be $\gtrsim 10^{10}$ GeV to get the observed Higgs mass respecting the current limit on the charged Higgs mass. The framework predicts, $1 \lesssim \tan\beta \lesssim 2.2$ and $\tau[p\to e^+\, \pi^0] < 7 \times 10^{35}$ years, almost independent of values of the other parameters. The electroweak vacuum is found to be stable or metastable. The underlying framework provides an example of a viable sub-GUT scale theory of supersymmetric grand unified theory in which supersymmetry and unified gauge symmetry are broken at a common scale.

Constraints on the parameter space in an inert doublet model with two active doublets

We study a three Higgs doublet model where one doublet is inert and the other two doublets are active. Flavor changing neutral currents are avoided at tree-level by imposing a softly broken {Z}_2^{prime } symmetry and we consider type I and type II Yukawa structures. The lightest inert scalar is a viable Dark Matter (DM) candidate. A numerical scan of the free parameters is performed taking into account theoretical constraints such as positivity of the scalar potential and unitarity of 2 → 2 scattering amplitudes. The model is further constrained by experimental results such as B physics lower limits on charged Higgs masses, Electroweak Precision Observables, LEP II, LHC Higgs measurements, Planck measurement of the DM relic abundance and WIMP direct searches by the LUX and XENON1T experiments. The model predictions for mono-jet, mono Z and mono Higgs final states are studied and tested against current LHC data and we find the model to be allowed. We also discuss the effects of abandoning the “dark democracy” assumption common in studies of inert models. Projected sensitivities of direct detection experiments will leave only a tiny window in the DM mass versus coupling plane that is compliant with relic density bounds.

Charged Higgs bosons in naturally aligned two-Higgs-doublet models at the LHC

Measurements of a Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have become increasingly consistent with the predictions of the Standard Model (SM). This fact puts severe constraints on many potential low-energy extensions of the Higgs sector of the SM. In the well-known two-Higgs-doublet model (2HDM), an ``alignment limit'' of parameters readily furnishes one SM-like scalar and can be achieved naturally through an underlying symmetry. Among the other physical states of the 2HDM, a charged scalar ${H}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}$ would provide striking evidence of new physics if observed. We propose a novel technique for the observation of the process $pp\ensuremath{\rightarrow}tb{H}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}t\overline{t}b\overline{b}$ in the dileptonic decay channel at the LHC. The reconstruction of events in this channel is complicated by multiple $b$ jets and unobserved neutrinos in the final state. To determine the neutrino momenta, we implement a neutrino weighting procedure to study, for the first time, the $t\overline{t}b\overline{b}$ signature. We further train a pair of boosted decision trees to reconstruct and classify signal events. We determine the resulting reach within the context of naturally aligned 2HDMs, such as the maximally symmetric two-Higgs-doublet model (MS2HDM). By testing at the integrated luminosity of $150\text{ }\text{ }{\mathrm{fb}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ achieved in run 2 of the LHC, we find that this channel may restrict the parameter space of a type-II MS2HDM with charged Higgs masses as high as 680 GeV.

Quartic coupling unification in the maximally symmetric 2HDM

We consider the Maximally Symmetric Two-Higgs Doublet Model (MS-2HDM) in which the so-called Standard Model (SM) alignment can be naturally realised as a consequence of an accidental SO(5) symmetry in the Higgs sector. This symmetry is broken (i) explicitly by renormalization-group (RG) effects and (ii) softly by the bilinear scalar mass term $m^2_{12}$. We find that in the MS-2HDM all quartic couplings can unify at large RG scales $\mu_X \sim 10^{11}\,$-$\,10^{20}$ GeV. In particular, we show that quartic coupling unification can take place in two different conformally invariant points, where all quartic couplings vanish. We perform a vacuum stability analysis of the model in order to ensure that the electro-weak vacuum is sufficiently long-lived. The MS-2HDM is a minimal and very predictive extension of the SM governed by only three additional parameters: the unification scale $\mu_X$, the charged Higgs mass $M_{h^{\pm}}$ (or $m^2_{12}$) and $\tan\beta$, which allow one to determine the entire Higgs sector of the model. In terms of these input parameters, we present illustrative predictions of misalignment for the SM-like Higgs-boson couplings to the $W^\pm$ and $Z$ bosons and, for the first time, to the top and bottom quarks.

Impact of Yukawa-like dimension-five operators on the Georgi-Machacek model

We study the effects of including Yukawa-like dimension-5 operators in the Georgi-Machacek model where the Standard Model is augmented with triplet scalars. We focus only on the charged Higgs sector and investigate the constraints arising from radiative B-meson decays, neutral B-meson mixing and precision measurement of Zbb vertex. We observe that the inclusion of the dimension-5 operators causes substantial alteration of the limits on the charged Higgs masses and the vacuum expectation value of the triplets, derived otherwise using only the dimension-4 operators.

Pseudo-Dirac Higgsino dark matter in GUT scale supersymmetry

We investigate a scenario in which supersymmetry is broken at a scale MS ≥ 1014 GeV leaving only a pair of Higgs doublets, their superpartners (Higgsinos) and a gauge singlet fermion (singlino) besides the standard model fermions and gauge bosons at low energy. The Higgsino-singlino mixing induces a small splitting between the masses of the electrically neutral components of Higgsinos which otherwise remain almost degenerate in GUT scale supersymmetry. The lightest combination of them provides a viable thermal dark matter if the Higgsino mass scale is close to 1 TeV. The small mass splitting induced by the singlino turns the neutral components of Higgsinos into pseudo-Dirac fermions which successfully evade the constraints from the direct detection experiments if the singlino mass is ≲ 108 GeV. We analyse the constraints on the effective framework, arising from the stability of electroweak vacuum, observed mass and couplings of the Higgs, and the limits on the masses of the other scalars, by matching it with the next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model at MS. It is found that the presence of singlino at an intermediate scale significantly improves the stability of electroweak vacuum and allows a stable or metastable vacuum for almost all the values of tan β while the observed Higgs mass together with the limit on the charged Higgs mass favours tan β ≲ 3.

Probing heavy charged Higgs boson at the LHC

Signature of heavier charged Higgs boson, much above the top quark mass, is investigated at the LHC Run 2 experiments, following its decay mode via top and bottom quark focusing on both hadronic and leptonic signal final states. The generic two Higgs doublet model framework is considered with a special emphasis on supersymmetry motivated Type II model. The signal is found to heavily affected by the huge irreducible backgrounds due to the top pair production and QCD events. The jet substructure technique is used to tag moderately boosted top jets in order to reconstruct charged Higgs mass. The simple cut based analysis is performed optimizing various kinematic selections, and the signal sensitivity is found to be reasonable for only lower range of charged Higgs masses for very high luminosity 3000 fb$^{-1}$ option. However, employing the multi-variate analysis(MVA) technique, a remarkable improvement in signal sensitivity is achieved. We find, the charged Higgs signal for the mass range about $300-600$ is observable with 1000 fb$^{-1}$ luminosity option. However, for more high luminosity option 3000 fb$^{-1}$, the discovery potential can be extended to $700-800$ GeV.

Loop induced H±→W±Z decays in the aligned two-Higgs-doublet model

We present a complete one-loop computation of the $H^\pm \rightarrow W^\pm Z$ decay in the aligned two-Higgs-doublet model. The constraints from the electroweak precision observables, perturbative unitarity, vacuum stability and flavour physics are all taken into account along with the latest Large Hadron Collider searches for the charged Higgs. It is observed that a large enhancement of the branching ratio can be obtained in the limit where there is a large splitting between the charged and pseudo-scalar Higgs masses as well as for the largest allowed values of the alignment parameter $\varsigma_u$. We find that the maximum possible branching ratio in the case of a large mass splitting between $m_{H^\pm}$ and $m_A$ is $\approx 10^{-3}$ for $m_{H^\pm} \in (200,700)$ GeV which is in the reach of the high luminosity phase of the Large Hadron Collider.

Searching for the W\u03b3 decay of a charged Higgs boson

We study the prospects for charged Higgs boson searches in the Wγ decay channel. This loop-induced decay channel can be important if the charged Higgs is fermiophobic, particularly when its mass is below the WZ threshold. We identify useful kinematic observables and evaluate the future Large Hadron Collider sensitivity to this channel using the custodial-fiveplet charged Higgs in the Georgi-Machacek model as a fermiophobic benchmark. We show that the LHC with 300 fb−1 of data at 14 TeV will be able to exclude charged Higgs masses below about 130 GeV for almost any value of the SU(2)L-triplet vacuum expectation value in the model, and masses up to 200 GeV and beyond when the triplet vacuum expectation value is very small. We describe the signal simulation tools created for this analysis, which have been made publicly available.

Type II Seesaw and tau lepton at the HL-LHC, HE-LHC and FCC-hh

The tau lepton plays important role in distinguishing neutrino mass patterns and determining the chirality nature in heavy scalar mediated neutrino mass models, in the light of the neutrino oscillation experiments and its polarization measurement. We investigate the lepton flavor signatures with tau lepton at LHC upgrades, i.e. HL-LHC, HE-LHC and FCC-hh, through leptonic processes from doubly charged Higgs in the Type II Seesaw. We find that for the channel with one tau lepton in final states, the accessible doubly charged Higgs mass at HL-LHC can reach 655 GeV and 695 GeV for the neutrino mass patterns of normal hierarchy (NH) and inverted hierarchy (IH) respectively, with the luminosity of 3000 fb−1. Higher masses, 975-1930 GeV for NH and 1035-2070 GeV for IH, can be achieved at HE-LHC and FCC-hh.