- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine

Physical Review D

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Letter
  • Open Access

Light states in real multi-Higgs models with spontaneous CP violation

Carlos Miró*, Miguel Nebot†, and Daniel Queiroz‡

  • *Contact author: Carlos.Miro@uv.es
  • †Contact author: Miguel.Nebot@uv.es
  • ‡Contact author: Daniel.Queiroz@uv.es
PDF

Phys. Rev. D 111, L111703 – Published 25 June, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.111.L111703

Abstract

In models with extended scalar sectors consisting of multiple Higgs doublets that trigger spontaneous electroweak symmetry breaking, it might be expected that the abundance of dimensionful quadratic couplings in the scalar potential could allow for a regime where, apart from the would-be Goldstone bosons and a neutral Higgs-like state, all new scalars have masses much larger than the electroweak scale. In the case of models where CP invariance holds at the Lagrangian level but is broken by the vacuum, we show that such a reasonable expectation does not hold. When perturbativity requirements are placed on the dimensionless quartic couplings, the spectrum of the new scalars includes one charged and two additional neutral states whose masses cannot be much larger than the electroweak scale.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (33)

  1. G. Aad et al. (ATLAS Collaboration), Observation of a new particle in the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson with the ATLAS detector at the LHC, Phys. Lett. B 716, 1 (2012).
  2. S. Chatrchyan et al. (CMS Collaboration), Observation of a new boson at a mass of 125 GeV with the CMS experiment at the LHC, Phys. Lett. B 716, 30 (2012).
  3. M. Baak, M. Goebel, J. Haller, A. Hoecker, D. Kennedy, K. Moenig, M. Schott, and J. Stelzer (Gfitter Collaboration), Updated status of the global electroweak fit and constraints on new physics, Eur. Phys. J. C 72, 2003 (2012).
  4. S. Weinberg, Mass of the Higgs boson, Phys. Rev. Lett. 36, 294 (1976).
  5. H. D. Politzer and S. Wolfram, Bounds on particle masses in the Weinberg-Salam model, Phys. Lett. 82B, 242 (1979); 83B, 421(E) (1979).
  6. N. Cabibbo, L. Maiani, G. Parisi, and R. Petronzio, Bounds on the fermions and Higgs boson masses in grand unified theories, Nucl. Phys. B158, 295 (1979).
  7. R. F. Dashen and H. Neuberger, How to get an upper bound on the Higgs mass, Phys. Rev. Lett. 50, 1897 (1983).
  8. D. J. E. Callaway, Nontriviality of gauge theories with elementary scalars and upper bounds on Higgs masses, Nucl. Phys. B233, 189 (1984).
  9. B. W. Lee, C. Quigg, and H. B. Thacker, The strength of weak interactions at very high-energies and the Higgs boson mass, Phys. Rev. Lett. 38, 883 (1977).
  10. B. W. Lee, C. Quigg, and H. B. Thacker, Weak interactions at very high-energies: The role of the Higgs boson mass, Phys. Rev. D 16, 1519 (1977).
  11. D. A. Dicus and V. S. Mathur, Upper bounds on the values of masses in unified gauge theories, Phys. Rev. D 7, 3111 (1973).
  12. P. Langacker and H. A. Weldon, A mass sum rule for higgs bosons in arbitrary models, Phys. Rev. Lett. 52, 1377 (1984).
  13. H. A. Weldon, Constraints on scalar masses implied by spontaneous symmetry breaking, Phys. Lett. 146B, 59 (1984).
  14. T. D. Lee, A theory of spontaneous T violation, Phys. Rev. D 8, 1226 (1973).
  15. T. D. Lee, CP nonconservation and spontaneous symmetry breaking, Phys. Rep. 9, 143 (1974).
  16. H. Huffel and G. Pocsik, Unitarity bounds on Higgs boson masses in the Weinberg-Salam model with two Higgs doublets, Z. Phys. C 8, 13 (1981).
  17. R. Casalbuoni, D. Dominici, F. Feruglio, and R. Gatto, Tree level unitarity violation for large scalar mass in multi-Higgs extensions of the standard model, Nucl. Phys. B299, 117 (1988).
  18. J. Maalampi, J. Sirkka, and I. Vilja, Tree level unitarity and triviality bounds for two Higgs models, Phys. Lett. B 265, 371 (1991).
  19. S. Kanemura, T. Kubota, and E. Takasugi, Lee-Quigg-Thacker bounds for Higgs boson masses in a two doublet model, Phys. Lett. B 313, 155 (1993).
  20. I. F. Ginzburg and I. P. Ivanov, Tree-level unitarity constraints in the most general 2HDM, Phys. Rev. D 72, 115010 (2005).
  21. J. Horejsi and M. Kladiva, Tree-unitarity bounds for THDM Higgs masses revisited, Eur. Phys. J. C 46, 81 (2006).
  22. S. Kanemura and K. Yagyu, Unitarity bound in the most general two Higgs doublet model, Phys. Lett. B 751, 289 (2015).
  23. I. P. Ivanov, Building and testing models with extended Higgs sectors, Prog. Part. Nucl. Phys. 95, 160 (2017).
  24. H. E. Haber and Y. Nir, Multiscalar models with a high-energy scale, Nucl. Phys. B335, 363 (1990).
  25. F. Faro, J. C. Romao, and J. P. Silva, Nondecoupling in multi-Higgs doublet models, Eur. Phys. J. C 80, 635 (2020).
  26. S. Carrolo, J. C. Romão, J. P. Silva, and F. Vazão, Symmetry and decoupling in multi-Higgs boson models, Phys. Rev. D 103, 075026 (2021).
  27. M. Nebot, F. J. Botella, and G. C. Branco, Vacuum induced CP violation generating a complex CKM matrix with controlled scalar FCNC, Eur. Phys. J. C 79, 711 (2019).
  28. M. Nebot, Bounded masses in two Higgs doublets models, spontaneous CP violation and Z2 symmetry, Phys. Rev. D 102, 115002 (2020).
  29. U. Nierste, M. Tabet, and R. Ziegler, Cornering spontaneous CP violation with charged-Higgs-boson searches, Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 031801 (2020).
  30. G. Barenboim, M. Gorbahn, U. Nierste, and M. Raidal, Higgs sector of the minimal left-right symmetric model, Phys. Rev. D 65, 095003 (2002).
  31. J. F. Gunion and H. E. Haber, The CP conserving two Higgs doublet model: The approach to the decoupling limit, Phys. Rev. D 67, 075019 (2003).
  32. M. Carena, I. Low, N. R. Shah, and C. E. M. Wagner, Impersonating the standard model Higgs boson: Alignment without decoupling, J. High Energy Phys. 04 (2014) 015.
  33. A. Pilaftsis, Symmetries for standard model alignment in multi-Higgs doublet models, Phys. Rev. D 93, 075012 (2016).

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. D 111, L111703– Published 25 June, 2025
  • Received 12 November 2024
  • Accepted 8 April 2025
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation