Fiducial cross sections for the lepton-pair-plus-photon decay mode in Higgs production up to NNLO QCD

The rare three-body decay of a Higgs boson to a lepton-antilepton pair and a photon is starting to become experimentally accessible at the LHC. We investigate how higher-order QCD corrections to the dominant gluon-fusion production process impact on the fiducial cross sections in this specific Higgs decay mode for electrons and muons. Corrections up to NNLO QCD are found to be sizeable. They are generally uniform in kinematical variables related to the Higgs boson, but display several distinctive features in the kinematics of its individual decay products.

Polarized Z bosons from the decay of a Higgs boson produced in association with two jets at the LHC

Investigating the polarization of weak bosons provides an important probe of the scalar and gauge sector of the Standard Model. This can be done in the Higgs decay to four leptons, whose Standard-Model leading-order amplitude enables to generate polarized observables from unpolarized ones via a fully-differential reweighting method. We study the $$\text {Z} $$ Z -boson polarization from the decay of a Higgs boson produced in association with two jets, both in the gluon-fusion and in the vector-boson fusion channel. We also address the possibility of extending the results of this work to higher orders in perturbation theory.

Fermion singlet dark matter in a pseudoscalar dark matter portal

We explore a simple extension to the Standard Model containing two gauge singlets: a Dirac fermion and a real pseudoscalar. In some regions of the parameter space both singlets are stable without the necessity of additional symmetries, then becoming a possible two-component dark matter model. We study the relic abundance production via freeze-out, with the latter determined by annihilations, conversions and semi-annihilations. Experimental constraints from invisible Higgs decay, dark matter relic abundance and direct/indirect detection are studied. We found three viable regions of the parameter space, and the model is sensitive to indirect searches.

On new physics contributions to the Higgs decay to Zγ

We explore models of new physics that can give rise to large (100% or more) enhancements to the rate of Higgs decay to Zγ while still being consistent with other measurements. We show that this is impossible in simple models with one additional multiplet and also in well motivated models such as the MSSM and folded SUSY. We do find models with several multiplets that carry electroweak charge where such an enhancement is possible, but they require destructive interference effects. We also show that kinematic measurements in Higgs decay to four leptons can be sensitive to such models. Finally we explore the sensitivity of four lepton measurements to supersymmetric models and find that while the measurement is difficult with the high luminosity LHC, it may be possible with a future high energy hadron collider.

The Higgs potential in 2HDM extended with a real triplet scalar: A roadmap

We perform a comprehensive study of the Higgs potential of the two Higgs doublet model extended by a real triplet scalar field [Formula: see text]. This model, dubbed [Formula: see text], has a rich Higgs spectrum consisting of three CP-even Higgs [Formula: see text], one CP-odd [Formula: see text] and two pairs of charged Higgs [Formula: see text]. First, we determine the perturbative unitarity constraints and a set of nontrivial conditions for the boundedness from below (BFB). Then we derive the Veltman conditions by considering the quadratic divergencies of Higgs boson self-energies in [Formula: see text]. We find that the parameter space is severely delimited by these theoretical constraints, as well as experimental exclusion limits and Higgs signal rate measurements at LEP and LHC. Using HiggsBounds-5.3.2beta and HiggSignals-2.2.3beta public codes, an exclusion test at [Formula: see text] is then performed on the physical scalars of [Formula: see text]. Our analysis provides a clear insight on the nonstandard scalar masses, showing that the allowed ranges are strongly sensitive to the sign of mixing angle [Formula: see text], essentially when naturalness is involved. For [Formula: see text] scenario, our results place higher limits on the bounds of all scalar masses, and show that the pairs [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] are nearly mass degenerate varying within the intervals [Formula: see text] GeV and [Formula: see text] GeV, respectively. When [Formula: see text] turns positive, we show that consistency with theoretical constraints and current LHC data, essentially on the diphoton decay channel, favors Higgs masses varying within wide allowed ranges: [Formula: see text] GeV for [Formula: see text]; [Formula: see text] GeV for ([Formula: see text], [Formula: see text]) and [Formula: see text] GeV for ([Formula: see text], [Formula: see text]). Finally, we find that the [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] Higgs decay modes are generally correlated if [Formula: see text] lies within the reduced intervals [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] parameter is frozen around [Formula: see text] ([Formula: see text]) for [Formula: see text] ([Formula: see text]).

A fully differential SMEFT analysis of the golden channel using the method of moments

The Method of Moments is a powerful framework to disentangle the relative contributions of amplitudes of a specific process to its various phase space regions. We apply this method to carry out a fully differential analysis of the Higgs decay channel h → 4ℓ and constrain gauge-Higgs coupling modifications parametrised by dimension-six effective operators. We find that this analysis approach provides very good constraints and minimises degeneracies in the parameter space of the effective theory. By combining the decay h → 4ℓ with Higgs-associated production processes, Wh and Zh, we obtain the strongest reported bounds on anomalous gauge-Higgs couplings.

Probing heavy charged Higgs bosons through bottom flavored hadrons in the $$H^+\rightarrow \bar{b}t\rightarrow B+X$$ channel in 2HDM

Observing light or heavy charged Higgs bosons $$H^\pm $$ H ± , lighter or heavier than the top quark, would be instant evidence of physics beyond the Standard Model. For this reason, in recent years searches for charged Higgs bosons have been in the center of attention of current colliders such as the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In spite of all efforts, no signal has been yet observed. Especially, the results of CMS and ATLAS experiments have excluded a large region in the MSSM $$m_{H^+}-\tan \beta $$ m H + - tan β parameter space for $$m_{H^+}=80{-}160$$ m H + = 80 - 160 GeV corresponding to the entire range of $$\tan \beta $$ tan β up to 60. Therefore, it seems that one should concentrate on probing heavy charged Higgs bosons ($$m_{H^\pm }>m_t$$ m H ± > m t ) so in this context each new probing channel is welcomed. In this work, we intend to present our proposed channel to search for heavy charged Higgses through the study of scaled-energy distribution of bottom-flavored mesons (B) inclusively produced in charged Higgs decay, i.e., $$H^+\rightarrow t\bar{b}\rightarrow B+X$$ H + → t b ¯ → B + X . Our study is carried out within the framework of the generic two Higgs doublet model (2HDM) using the massless scheme where the zero mass parton approximation is adopted for bottom quark.

Hybrid calculation of the MSSM Higgs boson masses using the complex THDM as EFT

Recently, the Higgs boson masses in the Minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) and their mixing have been calculated using the complex two-Higgs-doublet model (cTHDM) as an effective field theory (EFT) of the MSSM. Here, we discuss the implementation of this calculation, which we improve in several aspects, into the hybrid framework of by combing the cTHDM-EFT calculation with the existing fixed-order calculation. This combination allows accurate predictions also in the intermediate regime where some SUSY particles are relatively light, some relatively heavy and some in between. Moreover, the implementation provides precise predictions for the Higgs decay rates and production cross-sections.