Revealing mass-degenerate states in Higgs boson signals

Abstract

Abstract The observed Higgs boson signals to-date could be due to having two quasi-degenerate $$125 \,\text {GeV}$$ 125GeV scalar states in Nature. This kind of scenario tallies well with the predictions from the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM). We have analysed the phenomenological NMSSM Higgs boson couplings and derived a parameterization of the signal strengths within the two quasi-degenerate framework. With essentially two parameters, it is shown that the combined strengths of the two quasi-degenerate Higgs states in the leptonic (and b-quark) decay channels depart from the Standard Model values in the opposite direction to those in the vector boson channels. We identify experimental measurements for distinguishing a single from a double Higgs scenarios. The proposed parameterization can be used for benchmarking studies towards establishing the status of quasi-degenerate Higgs scenarios.