Higgs masses in the standard,multi-Higgs and supersymmetric models

Theoretical constraints and limits on the masses of Higgs scalars in the standard electroweak model, in electroweak models with additional Higgs doublets and in various supersymmetric models are presented. In the standard model, the lower limit on the Higgs mass, based on vacuum stability arguments, is reviewed in detail, as are “upper limits” based on perturbative constraints. In most grand unified and all supersymmetric models, however, at least two doublets are needed. The masses of the various Higgs scalars in the two-doublet model are discussed and constraints on their masses are found, including the generalization of the above limits. The results are then generalized to models with more than two doublets. Finally, recent attempts at constructing models with low-energy supersymmetry are reviewed and it is shown that in many models, fairly stringent tree-level mass relations among the Higgs scalars can be found. These relations are interesting in that they do not refer to the supersymmetric partners of ordinary particles, and they are most restrictive in models in which the supersymmetry is explicitly broken, i.e., via arbitrary mass terms.     

Modified Yang-Mills Theory and Electroweak Interactions

Since the Higgs boson of the standard electroweak model has not been detecteddespite many experimental attempts, nonstandard electroweak models notincluding the Higgs boson may be worthy of consideration; one of them isproposed here. This new model of electroweak interactions is based on theYang-Mills theory completed by a nontrivial condition at infinity for theYang-Mills potentials corresponding to the zero-field intensities. It is shown thatwithin the framework of this model the three vector potentials of the Yang-Millstheory allow one to describe both the Maxwell electromagnetic interactions andthe Fermi weak interactions and to obtain the known value of the Z ⁰ boson mass.     

Partially composite two-Higgs doublet model

In the extra dimensional scenarios with gauge fields in the bulk, the Kaluza-Klein (KK) gauge bosons can induce Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) type attractive fourfermion interactions, which can break electroweak symmetry dynamically with accompanying composite Higgs fields. We consider a possibility that electroweak symmetry breaking (EWSB) is triggered by both a fundamental Higgs and a composite Higgs arising in a dynamical symmetry breaking mechanism induced by a new strong dynamics. The resulting Higgs sector is a partially composite two-Higgs doublet model with specific boundary conditions on the coupling and mass parameters originating at a compositeness scale Λ. The phenomenology of this model is discussed including the collider phenomenology at LHC and ILC.      

Can extra dimensions accessible to the SM explain the recent measurement of anomalous magnetic moment of the muon?

We investigate whether models with flat extra dimensions in which SM fields propagate can give a significant contribution to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon (MMM). In models with only SM gauge and Higgs fields in the bulk, the contribution to the MMM from Kaluza–Klein (KK) excitations of gauge bosons is very small. This is due to the constraint on the size of the extra dimensions from tree-level effects of KK excitations of gauge bosons on precision electroweak observables such as Fermi constant. If the quarks and leptons are also allowed to propagate in the (same) bulk (“universal” extra dimensions), then there are no contributions to precision electroweak observables at tree-level. However, in this case, the constraint from one-loop contribution of KK excitations of (mainly) the top quark to T parameter again implies that the contribution to the MMM is small. We show that in models with leptons, electroweak gauge and Higgs fields propagating in the (same) bulk, but with quarks and gluon propagating in a sub-space of this bulk, both the above constraints can be relaxed. However, with only one Higgs doublet, the constraint from the process b→sγ requires the contribution to the MMM to be smaller than the SM electroweak correction. This constraint can be relaxed in models with more than one Higgs doublet.     

Implications of the precision data for very light Higgs Boson scenarios in 2HDM(II)

We present an up-to-date analysis of the constraints the precision data impose on the (CP-conserving) Two Higgs Doublet Model of type II with emphasis on the possible existence of very light neutral (pseudo)scalar Higgs boson with mass below 20–30 GeV. We show that even in the presence of such light particles, the 2HDM(II) can describe the electroweak data with the precision comparable to that given by the SM. Particularly interesting lower limits on the mass of the lighter neutral CP-even scalar are obtained in the scenario with light CP-odd Higgs boson and large . Received: 8 June 1999 / Published online: 14 October 1999     

Electron electric dipole moment induced by octet-colored scalars

An appended sector of two octet-colored scalars, each an electroweak doublet, is an interesting extension of the simple two Higgs doublet model motivated by the minimal flavor violation. Their rich CP violating interaction gives rise to a sizable electron electric dipole moment, besides the quark electric dipole moment via the two-loop contribution of Barr–Zee mechanism.     

Electroweak precision constraints on vector-like fermions

We calculate the oblique electroweak corrections and confront them with the experiments in an extension of the standard model. The new fields added are a vector-like weak doublet and a singlet fermion. After electroweak symmetry breaking there is a mixing between the components of the new fields, but there is no mixing allowed with the standard fermions. Four electroweak parameters, , , W and Y, are presented in the formalism of Barbieri et al.; these are the generalization of the Peskin–Takeuchi S, T and U. The vector-like extension is slightly constrained. requires the new neutral fermion masses not to be very far from each other, allowing for higher mass differences for higher masses and smaller mixing. , W and Y give practically no constraints on the masses. This extension can give a positive contribution to , allowing for a heavy Higgs boson in electroweak precision tests of the standard model.     

Exothermic Transition to a Future Susy Universe

The Higgs sector of the MSSM may be extended to solve the μ problem by the addition of a gauge singlet scalar field. We consider an extended Higgs model. For simplicity we consider the case where all the fields in the scalar sector are real. We analyze the vacuum structure of the model. We address the question of an exothermic phase transition from a broken susy phase with electroweak symmetry breaking (our current universe) to an exact susy phase with electroweak symmetry breaking (future susy universe).     

Higgs production: CP studies in e^-e^- collisions

We review the production of scalar Higgs-like particles in high-energy electron–electron collisions, via the fusion of electroweak gauge bosons. The emphasis is on how to distinguish a CP-even from a CP-odd Higgs particle. Among the more significant differences, we find that in the CP-odd case, the Higgs spectrum is much harder, and the dependence of the total cross section on the product of the polarizations of the two beams much stronger, than in the CP-even case. We also briefly discuss parity violation, and the production of charged Higgs bosons. Received: 1 December 1998 / Revised version: 15 February 1999 / Published online: 18 June 1999     

Higgs as a pseudo-Goldstone boson, the mu problem and gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking

We study the interplay between the spontaneous breaking of a global symmetry of the Higgs sector and gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking, in the framework of a supersymmetric model with global SU(3) symmetry. In addition to solving the supersymmetric flavor problem and alleviating the little hierarchy problem, this scenario automatically triggers the breaking of the global symmetry and provides an elegant solution to the μ/Bμ problem of gauge mediation. We study in detail the processes of global symmetry and electroweak symmetry breaking, including the contributions of the top/stop and gauge-Higgs sectors to the one-loop effective potential of the pseudo-Goldstone Higgs boson. While the joint effect of supersymmetry and of the global symmetry allows in principle the electroweak symmetry to be broken with little fine-tuning, the simplest version of the model fails to bring the Higgs mass above the LEP bound due to a suppressed tree-level quartic coupling. To cure this problem, we consider the possibility of additional SU(3)-breaking contributions to the Higgs potential, which results in a moderate fine-tuning. The model predicts a rather low messenger scale, a small tanβ value, a light Higgs boson with Standard Model-like properties, and heavy higgsinos.     

Six-quark decays of the Higgs boson in supersymmetry with R-parity violation

Both electroweak precision measurements and simple supersymmetric extensions of the standard model prefer a mass of the Higgs boson less than the experimental lower limit (on a standard-model-like Higgs boson) of 114 GeV. We show that supersymmetric models with R parity violation and baryon-number violation have a significant range of parameter space in which the Higgs boson dominantly decays to six jets. These decays are much more weakly constrained by current CERN LEP analyses and would allow for a Higgs boson mass near that of the Z. In general, lighter scalar quark and other superpartner masses are allowed. The Higgs boson would potentially be discovered at hadron colliders via the appearance of new displaced vertices.     

Determining the global minimum of Higgs potentials via Groebner bases – applied to the NMSSM

Determining the global minimum of Higgs potentials with several Higgs fields like the next-to-minimal supersymmetric extension of the standard model (NMSSM) is a non-trivial task already at the tree level. The global minimum of a Higgs potential can be found from the set of all its stationary points defined by a multivariate polynomial system of equations. We introduce here the algebraic Groebner basis approach to solve this system of equations. We apply the method to the NMSSM with CP-conserving as well as CP-violating parameters. The results reveal an interesting stationary-point structure of the potential. Requiring the global minimum to give the electroweak symmetry breaking observed in Nature excludes large parts of the parameter space.     

First-order electroweak phase transition powered by additional F-term loop effects in an extended supersymmetric Higgs sector

We investigate the one-loop effect of new charged scalar bosons on the Higgs potential at finite temperatures in the supersymmetric standard model with four Higgs doublet chiral superfields as well as a pair of charged singlet chiral superfields. In this model, the mass of the lightest Higgs boson h is determined only by the D-term in the Higgs potential at the tree-level, while the triple Higgs boson coupling for hhh can receive a significant radiative correction due to nondecoupling one-loop contributions of the additional charged scalar bosons. We find that the same nondecoupling mechanism can also contribute to realize stronger first order electroweak phase transition than that in the minimal supersymmetric standard model, which is definitely required for a successful scenario of electroweak baryogenesis. Therefore, this model can be a new candidate for a model in which the baryon asymmetry of the Universe is explained at the electroweak scale.     

Revisiting the global electroweak fit of the Standard Model and beyond with Gfitter

The global fit of the Standard Model to electroweak precision data, routinely performed by the LEP electroweak working group and others, demonstrated impressively the predictive power of electroweak unification and quantum loop corrections. We have revisited this fit in view of (i) the development of the new generic fitting package, Gfitter, allowing for flexible and efficient model testing in high-energy physics, (ii) the insertion of constraints from direct Higgs searches at LEP and the Tevatron, and (iii) a more thorough statistical interpretation of the results. Gfitter is a modular fitting toolkit, which features predictive theoretical models as independent plug-ins, and a statistical analysis of the fit results using toy Monte Carlo techniques. The state-of-the-art electroweak Standard Model is fully implemented, as well as generic extensions to it. Theoretical uncertainties are explicitly included in the fit through scale parameters varying within given error ranges. This paper introduces the Gfitter project, and presents state-of-the-art results for the global electroweak fit in the Standard Model (SM), and for a model with an extended Higgs sector (2HDM). Numerical and graphical results for fits with and without including the constraints from the direct Higgs searches at LEP and Tevatron are given. Perspectives for future colliders are analysed and discussed. In the SM fit including the direct Higgs searches, we find M _H =116.4_−1.3^+18.3 GeV, and the 2σ and 3σ allowed regions [114,145] GeV and [[113,168] and [180,225]] GeV, respectively. For the strong coupling strength at fourth perturbative order we obtain α _S (M _Z ²)=0.1193_−0.0027^+0.0028(exp )±0.0001 (theo). Finally, for the mass of the top quark, excluding the direct measurements, we find m _t =178.2_−4.2^+9.8 GeV. In the 2HDM we exclude a charged-Higgs mass below 240 GeV at 95% confidence level. This limit increases towards larger tan β, e.g., is excluded for tan β=70.     

Origin and phenomenology of weak-doublet spin-1 bosons

We study phenomenological consequences of the Standard Model extension by the new spin-1 fields with the internal quantum numbers of the electroweak Higgs doublets. We show, that there are at least three different classes of theories, all motivated by the hierarchy problem, which predict appearance of such vector weak-doublets not far from the weak scale. The common feature for all the models is the existence of an SUW(3) gauge extension of the weak SUW(2) group, which is broken down to the latter at some energy scale around TeV. The Higgs doublet then emerges as either a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson of a global remnant of SUW(3), or as a symmetry partner of the true eaten-up Goldstone boson. In the third class, the Higgs is a scalar component of a high-dimensional SUW(3) gauge field. The common phenomenological feature of these theories is the existence of the electroweak doublet vectors (Z^?,W^?), which in contrast to well-known Z^′ and W^′ bosons posses only anomalous (magnetic moment type) couplings with ordinary light fermions. This fact leads to some unique signatures for their detection at the hadron colliders.     

Electroweak vacuum stability in classically conformal $$$$ extension of the standard model

We consider the minimal U(1)\(_{B-L}\) extension of the standard model (SM) with the classically conformal invariance, where an anomaly-free U(1)\(_{B-L}\) gauge symmetry is introduced along with three generations of right-handed neutrinos and a U(1)\(_{B-L}\) Higgs field. Because of the classically conformal symmetry, all dimensional parameters are forbidden. The \(B-L\) gauge symmetry is radiatively broken through the Coleman–Weinberg mechanism, generating the mass for the \(U(1)_{B-L}\) gauge boson (\(Z^\prime \) boson) and the right-handed neutrinos. Through a small negative coupling between the SM Higgs doublet and the \(B-L\) Higgs field, the negative mass term for the SM Higgs doublet is generated and the electroweak symmetry is broken. In this model context, we investigate the electroweak vacuum instability problem in the SM. It is well known that in the classically conformal U(1)\(_{B-L}\) extension of the SM, the electroweak vacuum remains unstable in the renormalization group analysis at the one-loop level. In this paper, we extend the analysis to the two-loop level, and perform parameter scans. We identify a parameter region which not only solve the vacuum instability problem, but also satisfy the recent ATLAS and CMS bounds from search for \(Z^\prime \) boson resonance at the LHC Run-2. Considering self-energy corrections to the SM Higgs doublet through the right-handed neutrinos and the \(Z^\prime \) boson, we derive the naturalness bound on the model parameters to realize the electroweak scale without fine-tunings.     

Higgs boson properties in the Standard Model and its supersymmetric extensions

We review the realization of the Brout–Englert–Higgs mechanism in the electroweak theory and describe the experimental and theoretical constraints on the mass of the single Higgs boson expected in the minimal Standard Model. We also discuss the couplings of this Higgs boson and its possible decay modes as functions of its unknown mass. We then review the structure of the Higgs sector in the minimal supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model (MSSM), noting the importance of loop corrections to the masses of its five physical Higgs bosons. Finally, we discuss some non-minimal models. To cite this article: J. Ellis et al., C. R. Physique 8 (2007).     

Symmetry-breaking scenarios of Wilson-loop broken E6

In superstring theories formulated on a multiply-connected manifold, E₆ gauge symmetry can be broken at the Planck scale to an extended standard model via an effective Higgs adjoint. It is possible to arrange for the coloured components of a Higgs 27 to gain a large mass via this Wilson-Loop breaking while leaving some colour singlet components massless. The remaining light Higgs representations can then be applied to break the extended electroweak symmetry at a lower scale. We investigate some of the symmetry-breaking scenarios for a rank-six extended group. We find that the Higgs multiplets left light after Wilson-loop breaking are not sufficient to break the extended electroweak symmetry to U₁^em     

Electroweak symmetry breaking induced by dark matter

The mechanism behind electroweak symmetry breaking (EWSB) and the nature of dark matter (DM) are currently among the most important issues in high energy physics. Since a natural dark matter candidate is a weakly interacting massive particle or WIMP, with mass around the electroweak scale, it is clearly of interest to investigate the possibility that DM and EWSB are closely related. In the context of a very simple extension of the Standard Model, the inert doublet model, we show that dark matter could play a crucial role in the breaking of the electroweak symmetry. In this model, dark matter is the lightest component of an inert scalar doublet. The coupling of the latter with the Standard Model Higgs doublet breaks the electroweak symmetry at one-loop, à la Coleman–Weinberg. The abundance of dark matter, the breaking of the electroweak symmetry and the constraints from electroweak precision measurements can all be accommodated by imposing (an exact or approximate) custodial symmetry.     

Non-minimal Coupling of the Higgs Boson to Curvature in an Inflationary Universe

In the absence of new physics around \(10^{10}\) GeV, the electroweak vacuum is at best metastable. This represents a major challenge for high scale inflationary models as, during the early rapid expansion of the universe, it seems difficult to understand how the Higgs vacuum would not decay to the true lower vacuum of the theory with catastrophic consequences if inflation took place at a scale above \(10^{10}\) GeV. In this paper we show that the non-minimal coupling of the Higgs boson to curvature could solve this problem by generating a direct coupling of the Higgs boson to the inflationary potential thereby stabilizing the electroweak vacuum. For specific values of the Higgs field initial condition and of its non-minimal coupling, inflation can drive the Higgs field to the electroweak vacuum quickly during inflation.