Searching for exotic Higgs bosons at the LHC

We analyze in a model independent way the possibilities of digging out neutral exotic Higgs states, should they exist endowed with unconventional couplings with ordinary matter and gauge fields, at the 14 TeV run of the Large Hadron Collider, adding some comparative studies for 13.6 and 13 TeV runs. Flavor models, based on some discrete symmetry groups, with extended scalar sectors are known to yield exotic spin-0 states, both CP-even and CP-odd, with purely flavor off-diagonal Yukawa couplings. The gauge interaction of one such CP-even state is also unusual that, unlike the Standard Model Higgs boson, it does not couple to gauge boson pairs. Such unconventional properties immune these exotic states from receiving traditional collider and electroweak constraints, and hence those states could be light. Without committing to any specific model, exploiting their peculiar Yukawa and gauge properties, we explore the discovery potential of those exotic Higgs states through some interesting topologies by figuring out some specific kinematic variables that suppress the backgrounds.

Automated summary

In this study, we analyze the possibilities of discovering neutral exotic Higgs states in a model independent way, considering unconventional couplings with ordinary matter and gauge fields. We explore the discovery potential of these exotic Higgs states by utilizing their peculiar Yukawa and gauge properties.