Higgs Cascade Decays and the LHC

24 Jul 2018, 17:20
20m
Room A

Room A

Speaker

Sebastian Baum (Stockholm University and Oskar Klein Centre)

Description

In models with Higgs sectors larger than 2 Higgs doublets, as for example found in the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM), decays of heavy Higgs bosons into pairs of lighter Higgs bosons or a Z boson and a light Higgs (so-called Higgs cascade decays) can have large branching ratios. The presence of the 125 GeV SM-like mode suppresses the couplings of additional heavy Higgs bosons to pairs of SM-like Higgs bosons or a Z boson and a SM-like Higgs. Thus, Higgs cascade decays will typically produce a Z boson or a SM-like Higgs and an additional non-SM like Higgs.
I will discuss the reach of the LHC for different final states arising from the Higgs cascades and demonstrate that they can be used to effectively probe models with a corresponding Higgs sector, e.g. the NMSSM, at the LHC. In particular, such searches remain effective even in the low $\tan\beta$, large $m_A$ regime typically not accessible at the LHC because of the dominance of Higgs decays into pairs of top quarks and the interference with the QCD background.

Parallel Session Supersymmetry: Models, Phenomenology and Experimental Results

Primary author

Sebastian Baum (Stockholm University and Oskar Klein Centre)

Co-authors

Dr Nausheen Shah (Wayne State University) Bibhushan Shakya (MCTP) Katherine Freese (University of Michigan)

Presentation materials