Radiative CP violation in the Higgs sector of the Next-to-minimal supersymmetric model

We investigate the neutral Higgs sector in the next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model (NMSSM) with explicit CP violation at the one-loop level by using the effective potential method. In general, explicit CP violation is possible at the tree-level in the Higgs potential of the NMSSM, which may possess a complex phase. The tree-level Higgs potential can be made CP conserving by assuming that all the relevant parameters are real. However, the CP-conserving Higgs potential at the tree level may still develop complex phases at the one-loop level through radiative corrections. These complex phases exhibit explicit CP violation through the mixings between the scalar and pseudoscalar Higgs bosons. One of the complex phases arise in the neutralino sector. For a particular choice of the relevant parameter values, the scalar-pseudoscalar mixings are found to strongly dependent on this phase. Meanwhile, for a wide region in the parameter space, the ratios of CP mixing elements of the neutral Higgs boson mass matrix to CP non-mixing ones increase weakly against this phase. Also, the neutral Higgs boson masses are roughly stable against the variation of this phase.