Diphoton and Diboson Probes of Fermiophobic Higgs Bosons at the LHC

Abstract

Extensions of the Standard Model Higgs sector with electroweak charged scalars can possess exotic `Higgs' bosons with vanishing or suppressed couplings to Standard Model fermions. These `fermiophobic' scalars, which cannot be produced via gluon fusion, are constrained by LHC measurements of the 125 GeV Higgs boson to have a small vacuum expectation value. This implies that vector boson fusion and associated vector boson production are in general suppressed rendering conventional Higgs searches insensitive. However, Drell-Yan Higgs pair production, which is not present in the SM, can be sizeable even in the limit of vanishing exotic Higgs vacuum expectation value. We utilize this to show that diphoton searches at 8 TeV LHC already rule out a large class of neutral fermiophobic Higgs bosons below around 110 GeV. This includes fermiophobic scalars found in two Higgs doublet as well as Higgs triplet and Georgi-Machacek type models. Our results extend the only relevant limit on fermiophobic Higgs bosons obtained by a recent CDF analysis of $4\gamma +X$ Tevatron data. Furthermore, diphoton limits are independent of the decay of the second Higgs boson and thus apply even for degenerate masses in contrast to the CDF search. We also find that if the fermiophobic Higgs has very enhanced couplings to photons, masses as large as $\sim 150$ GeV can be ruled out while if these couplings are somehow highly suppressed, masses below $\sim 90$ GeV can still be ruled out. Finally, we show that $WW$ and $ZZ$ diboson searches may serve as complementary probes for masses above the diphoton limit up to $\sim 250$ GeV and discuss prospects at 13 TeV LHC.

arXiv commentreferences and small comments added

References in corpus (32)

• Observation of a new particle in the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson with the ATLAS detector at the LHC
• Observation of a new boson at a mass of 125 GeV with the CMS experiment at the LHC
• The automated computation of tree-level and next-to-leading order differential cross sections, and their matching to parton shower simulations
• Constraints on the spin-parity and anomalous HVV couplings of the Higgs boson in proton collisions at 7 and 8 TeV
• Composite Higgses
• The Other Natural Two Higgs Doublet Model
• Search for Scalar Diphoton Resonances in the Mass Range $65-600$ GeV with the ATLAS Detector in $pp$ Collision Data at $\sqrt{s}$ = 8 $TeV$
• A "Littlest Higgs" Model with Custodial SU(2) Symmetry
• Higgs At Last
• Higgs boson decay into 2 photons in the type~II Seesaw Model
• Unitarity bounds in the Higgs model including triplet fields with custodial symmetry
• Precision observables in SU(2) x U(1) models with an additional Higgs triplet
• Testing the custodial symmetry in the Higgs sector of the Georgi-Machacek model
• Fermiophobic Higgs bosons at the Tevatron
• Fermiophobic and other non-minimal neutral Higgs bosons at the LHC
• Higgs decays in the Two Higgs Doublet Model: Large quantum effects in the decoupling regime
• Experimental Signatures of Fermiophobic Higgs bosons
• Revealing the electroweak properties of a new scalar resonance
• Searches of exotic Higgs bosons in general mass spectra of the Georgi-Machacek model at the LHC
• Enhancements of weak gauge boson scattering processes at the CERN LHC
• Probing the Higgs Couplings to Photons in $h\to 4\ell$ at the LHC
• Scrutinizing the Higgs Signal and Background in the $2e2\mu$ Golden Channel
• Properties and searches of the exotic neutral Higgs bosons in the Georgi-Machacek model
• Extracting Effective Higgs Couplings in the Golden Channel
• Search for a fermiophobic Higgs at LEP 2
• Search for High Mass Photon Pairs in p-pbar --> gamma-gamma-jet-jet Events at sqrt(s)=1.8 TeV
• Search for Narrow Diphoton Resonances and for gamma-gamma+W/Z Signatures in p\bar p Collisions at sqrt(s)=1.8 TeV
• Search for a Higgs Boson Decaying into Two Photons at LEP
• Searches for Higgs bosons in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 and 8 TeV in the context of four-generation and fermiophobic models
• Search for Associated Production of Massive States Decaying into Two Photonsin e+e- Annihilations at sqrt(s) = 88-209 GeV
• Multi-photon signatures at the Fermilab Tevatron
• Indirect Effect of Supersymmetric Triplets in Stop Decays

Cited by in corpus (20)

• Light Signals from a Lighter Higgs
• Global fits in the Georgi-Machacek model
• $SU(2{)}_L$ triplet scalar as the origin of the 95 GeV excess?
• Precision tools and models to narrow in on the 750 GeV diphoton resonance
• Scalar decays to $\gamma \gamma$, $Z\gamma$, and $W\gamma$ in the Georgi-Machacek model
• Custodial symmetry violation in the Georgi-Machacek model
• Golden Probe of Electroweak Symmetry Breaking
• Searching for the $W\gamma$ decay of a charged Higgs boson
• Light (and darkness) from a light hidden Higgs
• Analysis of $W^{\pm }+4\gamma$ in the 2HDM Type-I at the LHC
• Search for di-photon decays of an axion-like particle in radiative $J/\psi$ decays
• Custodial Symmetry Breaking and Higgs Signatures at the LHC
• Natural Supersymmetry from Extra Dimensions
• Some new observations for the Georgi-Machacek scenario with triplet Higgs
• The Supersymmetric Georgi-Machacek Model
• Dominant production of heavier Higgs bosons through vector boson fusion in NMSSM
• Adding Pseudo-Observables to the Four-Lepton Experimentalist's Toolbox
• $WWV$ $(V=\gamma ,Z)$ vertex in the Georgi-Machacek model
• Disentangling the high and low cutoff scales via the trilinear Higgs couplings in the type-I two-Higgs-doublet model
• Triplet fermion WIMP dark matter in the general supersymmetric Georgi-Machacek model