https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-019-7539-0
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Revealing mass-degenerate states in Higgs boson signals
1
Department of Physics, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, 19839, Islamic Republic of Iran
2
Instituto de Investigación en Ciencias Físicas y Matemáticas (ICFM-USAC), Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, Guatemala, Guatemala
* e-mail: meugenia@ecfm.usac.edu.gt
Received:
29
July
2019
Accepted:
7
December
2019
Published online:
27
December
2019
The observed Higgs boson signals to-date could be due to having two quasi-degenerate 
scalar states in Nature. This kind of scenario tallies well with the predictions from the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM). We have analysed the phenomenological NMSSM Higgs boson couplings and derived a parameterization of the signal strengths within the two quasi-degenerate framework. With essentially two parameters, it is shown that the combined strengths of the two quasi-degenerate Higgs states in the leptonic (and b-quark) decay channels depart from the Standard Model values in the opposite direction to those in the vector boson channels. We identify experimental measurements for distinguishing a single from a double Higgs scenarios. The proposed parameterization can be used for benchmarking studies towards establishing the status of quasi-degenerate Higgs scenarios.
© The Author(s), 2019
