Exploring the di-photon decay of a light Higgs boson in the MSSM with explicit CP violation

The di-photon decay channel of the lightest Higgs boson is considered as a probe to explore CP violation in the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM). The scalar/pseudo-scalar mixing is considered along with CP violation entering through the Higgs–sfermion–sfermion couplings, with and without light sparticles. The impact of a light stop on the decay width and branching ratio (BR) is established through a detailed study of the amplitude of the process H₁→γγ. The other sparticles have little influence even when they are light. With a suitable combination of other MSSM parameters, a light stop can change the BR by more than 50% with a CP-violating phase φ_μ∼90°, while the change is almost nil with a heavy stop.