The Meaning of Higgs: tau^+ tau^- and gamma gamma at the Tevatron and the LHC

Abstract

In this paper we discuss how to extract information about physics beyond the Standard Model (SM) from searches for a light SM Higgs at Tevatron Run II and CERN LHC. We demonstrate that new (pseudo)scalar states predicted in both supersymmetric and dynamical models can have enhanced visibility in standard Higgs search channels, making them potentially discoverable at Tevatron Run II and CERN LHC. We discuss the likely sizes of the enhancements in the various search channels for each model and identify the model features having the largest influence on the degree of enhancement. We compare the key signals for the non-standard scalars across models and also with expectations in the SM, to show how one could start to identify which state has actually been found. In particular, we suggest the likely mass reach of the Higgs search in p pbar/pp to H to tau^+tau^- for each kind of non-standard scalar state and we demonstrate that p pbar/pp to H to gamma gamma may cleanly distinguish the scalars of supersymmetric models from those of dynamical models.