Further study of the global minimum constraint on the two-Higgs-doublet models: LHC searches for heavy Higgs bosons

Ning Chen, Chun Du, Yongcheng Wu, Xun-Jie Xu

Published 2018-10-10Version 1

The usually considered vacuum of the two-Higgs-doublet model (2HDM) could be unstable if it locates at a local but not global minimum (GM) of the scalar potential. By requiring the vacuum being a GM, we obtain an additional constraint, namely the GM constraint, on the scalar potential. In this work, we explore the GM constraint on the $CP$-conserving general 2HDM. This constraint is found to put limits to the soft $\mathbb{Z}_2$ breaking mass parameter of $m_{12}^2$ and also squeeze the heavy CP-even Higgs boson mass into larger values, for the $m_{12}^2< 0$ case. Combined with the current global signal fits from the LHC measurements of $125$ GeV Higgs boson, we discuss the phenomenological implications for the heavy Higgs boson searches at the LHC.