Further study of the global minimum constraint on the two-Higgs-doublet models: LHC searches for heavy Higgs bosons

Chen, Ning (School of Physics, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, China) ; Du, Chun (Key Laboratory of Cosmic Rays (Tibet University), Ministry of Education, Lhasa 850000, Tibet, China) ; Wu, Yongcheng (Ottawa-Carleton Institute for Physics, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, Ontario K1S 5B6, Canada) ; Xu, Xun-Jie (Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Postfach 103980, D-69029 Heidelberg, Germany)

11 February 2019

Abstract: The usually considered vacuum of the two-Higgs-doublet model (2HDM) could be unstable if it locates at a local but not global minimum (GM) of the scalar potential. By requiring the vacuum to be a GM, we obtain an additional constraint, namely the GM constraint, on the scalar potential. In this work, we explore the GM constraint on the $CP$-conserving general 2HDM. This constraint is found to put limits on the soft ${Z}_{2}$ breaking mass parameter ${m}_{12}^{2}$ and also squeeze the heavy $CP$-even Higgs boson mass into larger values for the ${m}_{12}^{2}<0$ case. Combined with the current global signal fits from the LHC measurements of the 125 GeV Higgs boson, we discuss the phenomenological implications for the heavy Higgs boson searches at the LHC.

Published in: Physical Review D 99 (2019)