Charged-Higgs Collider Signals with or without Flavor

TL;DR

The paper addresses how charged-Higgs signals at the LHC reveal the flavor structure of the MSSM Higgs sector. It analyzes single-Higgs production and charged-Higgs production in association with a hard jet, contrasting MFV with non-minimal flavor violation and incorporating full squark mass matrices to capture loop effects. The study finds that squark–gluino loops can lift chiral suppression and enhance production rates in certain beyond-MFV regions, with some scenarios yielding $\gtrsim 100$ fb, but strong flavor constraints significantly limit the viable parameter space. Overall, charged-Higgs searches at the LHC can probe flavor structures that rare kaon, B, and charm processes do not access, and can challenge the MFV assumption in the MSSM.

Abstract

A charged Higgs boson is a clear signal for an extended Higgs sector, as for example predicted by supersymmetry. Squark mixing can significantly change the pattern of charged-Higgs production and most notably circumvent the chiral suppression for single Higgs production. We evaluate the LHC discovery potential in the light of flavor physics, in the single-Higgs production channel and in association with a hard jet for small and moderate values of tan beta. Thoroughly examining current flavor constraints we find that non-minimal flavor structures can have a sizeable impact, but tend to predict moderate production rates. Nevertheless, charged-Higgs searches will probe flavor structures not accessible to rare kaon, bottom, or charm experiments, and can invalidate the assumption of minimal flavor violation.

Figures (5)

• Figure 1: Feynman diagrams contributing to $q \bar{q}^\prime \to H^\pm$ in the MSSM at tree level and at one-loop level. The last diagram is shown only to illustrate the contributions arising in SUSY models beyond MFV. Instead of the mass insertion approximation, we use the complete squark-mass matrix for the numerical analyses throughout the paper.
• Figure 2: Single-charged-Higgs production cross sections at the LHC. In the rainbow-colored area we include beyond-MFV parameters around the lower-mass parameter point (\ref{['eq:paras1']}). Two $\delta_{AB,ij}^u$ are varied in each panel, all others are set to zero. The area outside the rainbow is ruled out experimentally.
• Figure 3: Ratio of single-charged-Higgs cross sections including supersymmetric beyond-MFV loops vs. in the two-Higgs-doublet model. All supersymmetric parameters are given in Eq.(\ref{['eq:paras1']}). All beyond-MFV parameters except for $\delta^u_{LR,31}$ are zero.
• Figure 4: Single-charged-Higgs production cross sections at the LHC. In the rainbow-coded area we include beyond-MFV parameters around the higher-mass parameter point (\ref{['eq:paras2']}). Two $\delta_{AB,ij}^u$ are varied in each panel, all others are set to zero. The area outside is ruled out.
• Figure :