Visible cascade Higgs decays to four photons at hadron colliders.
The presence of a new singlet scalar particle a can open up new decay channels for the Higgs boson, through cascades of the form h --> 2a --> X, possibly making discovery through standard model channels impossible. If a is CP odd, its decays are particularly sensitive to new physics. Quantum effects from heavy fields can naturally make h --> 4 g the dominant decay which is difficult to observe at hadron colliders, and is allowed by CERN LEP for m(h) > 82 GeV. However, there are usually associated decays, either h --> 2g2gamma or h --> 4gamma, which are more promising. The decay h-->4gamma is a clean channel that can discover both a and h. At the CERN LHC with 300 fb(-1) of luminosity, a branching ratio of order 10(-4) is sufficient for discovery for a large range of Higgs boson masses. With total luminosity of approximately 8 fb(-1), discovery at the Fermilab Tevatron requires more than 5 x 10(-3) in branching ratio.
Chang
Spencer
S
Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, Department of Physics, New York University, New York, New York 10003, USA.
Fox
Patrick J
PJ
Weiner
Neal
N