Higgs bosons at the LHC

The investigation of the dynamics responsible for electroweak symmetry breaking is one of the prime tasks of the experiments at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In this article, the potential of the ATLAS and CMS experiments for the discovery of a standard model Higgs boson and for Higgs bosons in the minimal supersymmetric extension is summarized. Emphasis is put on those studies which have been performed recently by the experimental collaborations using a realistic simulation of the detector performance. This includes a discussion of the search for Higgs bosons using the vector boson-fusion mode, a discussion on the measurement of Higgs boson parameters as well as a detailed review of the MSSM sector for different benchmark scenarios.     

Higgs and SUSY searches at future colliders

In this talk, I discuss some aspects of Higgs searches at future colliders, particularly comparing and contrasting the capabilities of LHC and next linear collider (NLC), including the aspects of Higgs searches in supersymmetric theories. I will also discuss how the search and study of sparticles other than the Higgs can be used to give information about the parameters of the minimal supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM).     

Production of neutral Higgs-boson pairs at LHC

The reconstruction of the Higgs potential in the Standard Model or supersymmetric theories demands the measurement of the trilinear Higgs couplings. These couplings affect the multiple production of Higgs bosons at high energy colliders. We present a systematic overview of the cross sections for the production of pairs of (light) neutral Higgs bosons at the LHC. The analysis is carried out for the Standard Model and its minimal supersymmetric extension. Received: 30 March 1999 / Published online: 28 May 1999     

Superconformal technicolor

In supersymmetric theories with a strong conformal sector, soft supersymmetry breaking at the TeV scale naturally gives rise to confinement and chiral symmetry breaking at the same scale. We consider two such scenarios, one where the strong dynamics induces vacuum expectation values for elementary Higgs fields, and another where the strong dynamics is solely responsible for electroweak symmetry breaking. In both cases, the mass of the Higgs boson can exceed the LEP bound without tuning, solving the supersymmetry naturalness problem. A good precision electroweak fit can be obtained, and quark and lepton masses are generated without flavor-changing neutral currents. In addition to standard supersymmetry signals, these models predict production of multiple heavy standard model particles (t, W, Z, and b) from decays of resonances in the strong sector.     

Prospects for Higgs boson searches at the Large Hadron Collider

These proceedings summarize the sensitivity for the CMS and ATLAS experiments at the LHC to discover a Standard Model Higgs boson with relatively low integrated luminosity per experiment. The most relevant discovery modes are dealt with. A brief discussion on the expected performance from these experiments in searches for one or more of the Higgs bosons from the minimal version of the supersymmetric theories is also included.      

Particle mass limits in minimal and nonminimal supersymmetric models

A review of the Higgs and neutralino sector of supersymmetric models is presented. This includes the upper limit on the mass of the lightest Higgs boson in the minimal supersymmetric standard model, as well as models based on the standard model gauge groupSU(2) _L xU(l) _Y with extended Higgs sectors. We then discuss the Higgs sector of left-right supersymmetric models, which conserveR-parity as a consequence of gauge invariance, and present a calculable upper bound on the mass of the lightest Higgs boson in these models. We also discuss the neutralino sector of general supersymmetric models based on the SM gauge group. We show that, as a consequence of gauge coupling unification, an upper bound on the mass of the lightest neutralino as a function of the gluino mass can be obtained.     

En-gauging naturalness

The discovery of a 125.5 GeV Higgs with standard model-like couplings and naturalness considerations motivate gauge extensions of the MSSM. We analyse two variants of such an extension and carry out a phenomenological study of regions of the parameter space satisfying current direct and indirect constraints, employing state-of-the-art two-loop RGE evolution and GMSB boundary conditions. We find that due to the appearance of non-decoupled D-terms it is possible to obtain a 125.5 GeV Higgs with stops below 2 TeV, while the uncoloured sparticles could still lie within reach of the LHC. We compare the contributions of the stop sector and the non-decoupled D-terms to the Higgs mass, and study their effect on the Higgs couplings. We further investigate the nature of the next-to lightest supersymmetric particle, in light of the GMSB motivated searches currently being pursued by ATLAS and CMS.     

Searching for stoponium along with the Higgs boson

Stoponium, a bound state of the top squark and its antiparticle in a supersymmetric model, may be found in the ongoing Higgs searches at the LHC. Its WW and ZZ detection ratios relative to the standard model Higgs boson can be more than unity from the WW* threshold to the two Higgs threshold. The γγ channel is equally promising. Some regions of the stoponium mass below 150 GeV are already being probed by the ATLAS and CMS experiments.     

SUSY spectrum and the Higgs mass in the BLMSSM

The predictions for the mass of the light CP-even Higgs are investigated in the context of a simple extension of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model where the baryon and lepton numbers are local gauge symmetries. This theory predicts the existence of light charged and neutral leptons which give extra contributions to the Higgs mass at the one-loop level. We show the possibility to satisfy the LEP2 bound and achieve a Higgs mass around 125 GeV in a supersymmetric spectrum with light sfermions and small left–right mixing in the stop sector. We make a brief discussion of the unique leptonic signals at the Large Hadron Collider. This theory predicts baryon number violation at the low scale and one could avoid the current LHC bounds on the supersymmetric mass spectrum.     

General issues connecting flavor symmetry and supersymmetry

We motivate and construct supersymmetric theories with continuous flavor symmetry, under which the electroweak Higgs doublets transform non-trivially. Flavor symmetry is spontaneously broken at a large mass scale in a sector of gauge-singlet fields; the light Higgs multiplets naturally emerge as special linear combinations that avoid acquiring the generic large mass. Couplings of the light Higgs doublets to light moduli fields from the singlet sector could lead to important effects in the phenomenology of the Higgs sector.     

Constraints on the MSSM from the Higgs sector

We discuss the constraints on supersymmetry in the Higgs sector arising from LHC searches, rare B decays and dark matter direct detection experiments. We show that constraints derived on the mass of the lightest h ⁰ and the CP-odd A ⁰ bosons from these searches are covering a larger fraction of the SUSY parameter space compared to searches for strongly interacting supersymmetric particle partners. We discuss the implications of a mass determination for the lightest Higgs boson in the range 123<M _h <127?GeV, inspired by the intriguing hints reported by the ATLAS and CMS Collaborations, as well as those of a non-observation of the lightest Higgs boson for MSSM scenarios not excluded at the end of 2012 by LHC and direct dark matter searches and their implications on LHC SUSY searches.     

Role of h-->etaeta in intermediate-mass Higgs boson searches at the Large Hadron Collider

The dominance of the h-->etaeta decay mode for the intermediate-mass Higgs boson is highly motivated to solve the little hierarchy problem and to ease the tension with the precision data. However, the discovery modes for m(h) approximately <150 GeV, h-->gammagamma, and W/Zh-->(lnu/ll)(bb), will be substantially affected. In this Letter, we show that h-->etaeta-->4b is complementary and we can use this decay mode to detect the intermediate Higgs boson at the LHC, via Wh and Zh production. Requiring at least one charged lepton and 4B tags in the final state, we can identify a clean Higgs boson signal for m(h) approximately <150 GeV with a high significance and with a full Higgs mass reconstruction. We use the next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model and the simplest little Higgs model for illustration.     

Higgs physics at LHC

The large hadron collider (LHC) and its detectors, ATLAS and CMS, are being built to study TeV scale physics, and to fully understand the electroweak symmetry breaking mechanism. The Monte-Carlo simulation results for the standard model and minimal super symmetric standard model Higgs boson searches and parameter measurements are discussed. Emphasis is placed on recent investigations of Higgs produced in association with top quarks and in vector boson fusion channels. These results indicate that Higgs sector can be explored in many channels within a couple of years of LHC operation, i.e.,L = 30 fb⁻¹. Complete coverage including measurements of Higgs parameters can be carried out with full LHC program.     

The one-loop renormalization of the MSSM Higgs sector and its application to the neutral scalar Higgs masses

The structure of the Higgs sector in the minimal supersymmetric standard model is reviewed at the oneloop level. An on-shell renormalization scheme of the MSSM Higgs sector is presented in detail together with the complete list of formulae for the neutral Higgs masses at the one-loop level. The results of a complete one-loop calculation for the mass spectrum of the neutral MSSM Higgs bosons and the quality of simpler Born-like approximations are discussed for sfermion and gaugino masses in the range of the electroweak scale.     

Upper bounds on superpartner masses from upper bounds on the Higgs boson mass

The LHC is putting bounds on the Higgs boson mass. In this Letter we use those bounds to constrain the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) parameter space using the fact that, in supersymmetry, the Higgs mass is a function of the masses of sparticles, and therefore an upper bound on the Higgs mass translates into an upper bound for the masses for superpartners. We show that, although current bounds do not constrain the MSSM parameter space from above, once the Higgs mass bound improves big regions of this parameter space will be excluded, putting upper bounds on supersymmetry (SUSY) masses. On the other hand, for the case of split-SUSY we show that, for moderate or large tanβ, the present bounds on the Higgs mass imply that the common mass for scalars cannot be greater than 10(11) GeV. We show how these bounds will evolve as LHC continues to improve the limits on the Higgs mass.     

Large hadron collider physics program: Compact muon solenoid experiment

The LHC physics program at CERN addresses some of the fundamental issues in particle physics and CMS experiment would concentrate on them. The CMS detector is designed for the search of Standard Model Higgs boson in the whole possible mass range. Also it will be sensitive to Higgs bosons in the minimal supersymmetric model and well adapted to searches for SUSY particles, new massive vector bosons, CP-violation in B-system, search for subtructure of quarks and leptons, etc. In the LHC heavy ion collisions the energy density would be well above the threshold for the possible formation of quark-gluon plasma.     

Supersymmetry search via gauge boson fusion

We propose a novel method for the search of supersymmetry, especially for the electroweak gauginos at the large hadron collider (LHC). Gauge boson fusion technique was shown to be useful for heavy and intermediate mass Higgs bosons. In this article, we have shown that this method can also be applied to find the signals of EW gauginos in supersymmetric theories where the canonical search strategies for these particles fail.     

Wino LSP detection in the light of recent Higgs searches at the LHC

Recent LHC data showed excesses of Higgs-like signals at the Higgs mass of around 125 GeV. This may indicate supersymmetric models with relatively heavy scalar fermions to enhance the Higgs mass. The desired mass spectrum is realized in the anomaly-mediated supersymmetry breaking model, in which the Wino can naturally be the lightest superparticle (LSP). We discuss possibilities for confirming such a scenario, particularly detecting signals from Wino LSP at direct detection experiments, indirect searches at neutrino telescopes and at the LHC.     

Di-photon Higgs signal at the LHC: A comparative study in different supersymmetric models

As the most important discovery channel for a light Higgs boson at the LHC, the di-photon signal gg→h→γγ is sensitive to underlying physics. In this work we investigate such a signal in a comparative way by considering three different supersymmetric models, namely the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM), the next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model (NMSSM) and the nearly minimal supersymmetric standard model (nMSSM). Under the current collider and cosmological constraints we scan over the parameter space and obtain the following observation in the allowed parameter space: (i) In the nMSSM the signal rate is always suppressed; (ii) In the MSSM the signal rate is suppressed in most cases, but in a tiny corner of the parameter space it can be enhanced (maximally by a factor of 2); (iii) In the NMSSM the signal rate can be enhanced or suppressed depending on the parameter space, and the enhancement factor can be as large as 7.     

Higgs phenomenology of the supersymmetric model with a gauge singlet

We discuss the Higgs sector of the supersymmetric standard model extended by a gauge singlet for the range of parameters, which is compatible with universal soft supersymmetry breaking terms at the GUT scale. We present results for the masses, couplings and decay properties of the lightest Higgs bosons, in particular with regard to Higgs boson searches at LEP. The prospects differ significantly from the ones within the MSSM.