https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s2006-02585-7
Theoretical Physics
Di-photon Higgs signals at the LHC in the next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model
High Energy Physics Group, School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Southampton, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK
* e-mail: stefano@phys.soton.ac.uk
Received:
20
March
2006
Revised:
5
May
2006
Published online:
27
June
2006
The NMSSM contains a Higgs singlet in addition to the two Higgs doublets typical of the MSSM, thus resulting in a total of seven physical Higgs mass states. Therefore, the phenomenology of the NMSSM Higgs sector can differ considerably from that of the MSSM, and there are good prospects of finding in regions of the NMSSM parameter space Higgs signals that cannot be reproduced in the MSSM. We examined here the two-photon decay mode of a Higgs boson and found that up to three neutral Higgs states, heavy and/or light, could be simultaneously observable at the LHC, a possibility precluded to the MSSM. There are also some possibilities that only the lightest NMSSM Higgs boson be detectable via this mode, with a mass beyond the upper limit of the corresponding MSSM state, thus also allowing one to distinguish between the two scenarios. However, in most of the NMSSM parameter space the configurations of the non-minimal model are not very different from those arising in the minimal case.
© Springer-Verlag, 2006
