Nonstandard Higgs Boson Decays

Abstract

This review summarizes the motivations for and phenomenological consequences of nonstandard Higgs boson decays, with emphasis on final states containing a pair of non-Standard-Model particles that subsequently decay to Standard Model particles. Typically these non-Standard-Model particles are part of a ``hidden'' sector, for example a pair of neutral Higgs bosons or a pair of unstable neutralinos. We emphasize that such decays allow for a Higgs substantially below the Standard Model Higgs LEP limit of 114 GeV. This in turn means that the ``fine-tuning'' problems of many Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) theories, in particular supersymmetric models, can be eliminated while achieving excellent consistency with precision electroweak data which favor a Higgs boson with mass below $100\gev$ and standard $WW$, $ZZ$, and top couplings.

53 pages, review intended for Annual Reviews of Nuclear Science. Final corrections and references now included

References in corpus (5)

• Higgs Physics as a Window Beyond the MSSM (BMSSM)
• The NMSSM Solution to the Fine-Tuning Problem, Precision Electroweak Constraints and the Largest LEP Higgs Event Excess
• Role of h --> eta eta in Intermediate-Mass Higgs Boson Searches at the Large Hadron Collider
• Unparticles-Higgs Interplay
• Broadening the Higgs Boson with Right-Handed Neutrinos and a Higher Dimension Operator at the Electroweak Scale

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Hidden Thresholds: A Technique for Reconstructing New Physics Masses at Hadron Colliders
• Novel Higgs decay signals in R-parity violating models