Higgs Bosons as Probes of Nonminimal Supersymmetric Models

May 18, 2017
126 pages
Supervisor:
Thesis: PhD
  • Helsinki U.
(defense: May 18, 2017)
  • Published: May 18, 2017

Citations per year

0 Citations
Abstract: (submitter)
The experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have confirmed that the Standard Model (SM) is a good description of particle physics at the electroweak scale. The Standard Model is still incomplete, since it does not explain e.g. neutrino masses, dark matter, dark energy or gravity. Supersymmetry is a well motivated way to extend the Standard Model. The minimal supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) has become somewhat finetuned after the first run of the LHC and therefore the detailed study of nonminimal supersymmetric models is highly motivated. We studied phenomenological implications of some nonminimal supersymmetric models especially in the light of the recent discovery of a Higgs boson. Our studies focused on supersymmetry without R-parity and left-right symmetric supersymmetric models. In the MSSM a 125 GeV Higgs requires rather heavy superpartners. In nonminimal models the Higgs mass can be lifted by contributions from new particles at tree-level, loop-level or by mixing effects. We found that if we introduce spontaneous R-parity violation, the mixing between the SM-like Higgs and a right-handed sneutrino can increase the mass of the SM-like Higgs if the sneutrino-like state is lighter than 125 GeV. One does not need as heavy superpartners as in the MSSM and thus fine-tuning is not as severe. If the Higgs mass gets additional contributions, the squarks of the third generation can be more easily within the reach of the LHC. If R-parity is not imposed, the squarks can have new decay modes, which can have a large branching fraction. As an example we studied a model, where R-charges are identified with the lepton number and found that the discovery potential for the t˜→ be+ mode is well beyond 1 TeV squark masses. In left-right supersymmetry we studied the Higgs decay modes and the option of having a right-handed sneutrino as a dark matter candidate. We found that a loop-induced mixing of the bidoublets can either enhance or suppress the Higgs coupling to bottom quarks and thus change the signal strengths considerably. However, in the scan there was also a large number of points, where the couplings behaved close to those of the SM. The right-handed sneutrino is a part of a doublet in left-right symmetric models. We found that sneutrinos may annihilate via a D-term coupling to the Higgs and produce the observed relic density. If we assume the gauge coupling of the right-handed gauge interactions to be the same as for the left-handed ones, we were able to predict a range of masses for the sneutrino. We also showed that with 100 fb−1 we could get a signal of superpartners from the sleptonic decays of the right-handed WR-boson, if its mass is below 3 TeV.
  • sneutrino: right-handed
  • Higgs particle: mass
  • sparticle: heavy
  • coupling: Higgs
  • model: nonminimal
  • squark: mass
  • neutrino: mass
  • coupling: gauge
  • R parity: violation
  • scale: electroweak interaction