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Probing an up-phobic Higgs at colliders: The role of b-associated production in the democratic 3HDM

Dipankar Das1,*, Teesha Khandelwal2,†, and Ipsita Saha2,‡

  • *Contact author: d.das@iiti.ac.in
  • †Contact author: ph24d009@smail.iitm.ac.in
  • ‡Contact author: ipsita@iitm.ac.in
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Phys. Rev. D 114, 075028 – Published 21 October, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/179b-2qkg

Abstract

We show that there exists a theoretically well-motivated Higgs sector in which the conventional heavy-Higgs production mechanisms are suppressed. In this limit, the b-associated production channel assumes the role of the primary production mechanism. We demonstrate that the democratic three Higgs-doublet model (3HDM) provides a viable beyond the SM framework in which this limit can be realized. We further show that existing b-associated searches provide the most sensitive LHC probe of this 3HDM scenario in the up-phobic limit and derive the corresponding constraints on its parameter space. We also present projections for future collider searches, demonstrating their potential to probe further regions of the model’s up-phobic parameter space.

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Phys. Rev. D 114, 075028– Published 21 October, 2026
  • Received 8 September 2026
  • Accepted 29 September 2026
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