Global fits of the two-loop renormalized Two-Higgs-Doublet model with soft Z2Z_2 breaking

We determine the next-to-leading order renormalization group equations for the Two-Higgs-Doublet model with a softly broken $Z_2$ symmetry and CP conservation in the scalar potential. We use them to identify the parameter regions which are stable up to the Planck scale and find that in this case the quartic couplings of the Higgs potential cannot be larger than 1 in magnitude and that the absolute values of the S-matrix eigenvalues cannot exceed 2.5 at the electroweak symmetry breaking scale. Interpreting the 125 GeV resonance as the light CP-even Higgs eigenstate, we combine stability constraints, electroweak precision and flavour observables with the latest ATLAS and CMS data on Higgs signal strengths and heavy Higgs searches in global parameter fits to all four types of $Z_2$ symmetry. We quantify the maximal deviations from the alignment limit and find that in type II and Y the mass of the heavy CP-even (CP-odd) scalar cannot be smaller than 340 GeV (360 GeV). Also, we pinpoint the physical parameter regions compatible with a stable scalar potential up to the Planck scale. Motivated by the question how natural a Higgs mass of 125 GeV can be in the context of a Two-Higgs-Doublet model, we also address the hierarchy problem and find that the Two-Higgs-Doublet model does not offer a perturbative solution to it beyond 5 TeV.Comment: 30 pages, 29 figures. Major update of the experimental inputs; references adde

Revisiting lepton flavor violation in supersymmetric type II seesaw

In view of the recent measurement of reactor mixing angle $\theta_{13}$ and updated limit on $BR(\mu \to e \gamma)$ by the MEG experiment, we re-examine the charged lepton flavor violations in a framework of supersymmetric type II seesaw mechanism. Supersymmetric type II seesaw predicts strong correlation between $BR(\mu \to e \gamma)$ and $BR(\tau \to \mu \gamma)$ mainly in terms of the neutrino mixing angles. We show that such a correlation can be determined accurately after the measurement of $\theta_{13}$. We compute different factors which can affect this correlation and show that the mSUGRA-like scenarios, in which slepton masses are taken to be universal at the high scale, predicts $3.5 \lesssim BR(\tau \to \mu \gamma)/BR(\mu \to e \gamma) \lesssim 30$ for normal hierarchical neutrino masses. Any experimental indication of deviation from this prediction would rule out the minimal models of supersymmetric type II seesaw. We show that the current MEG limit puts severe constraints on the light sparticle spectrum in mSUGRA model if the seesaw scale lies within $10^{13}$-$10^{15}$ GeV. It is shown that these constraints can be relaxed and relatively light sparticle spectrum can be obtained in a class of models in which the soft mass of triplet scalar is taken to be non-universal at the high scale.Comment: Minor changes in text; accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Fingerprints of freeze-in dark matter in an early matter-dominated era

We study the impact of an alternate cosmological history with an early matter-dominated epoch on the freeze-in production of dark matter. Such early matter domination is triggered by a meta-stable matter field dissipating into radiation. In general, the dissipation rate has a non-trivial temperature and scale factor dependence. Compared to the usual case of dark matter production via the freeze-in mechanism in a radiation-dominated universe, in this scenario, orders of magnitude larger coupling between the visible and the dark sector can be accommodated. Finally, as a proof of principle, we consider a specific model where the dark matter is produced by a sub-GeV dark photon having a kinetic mixing with the Standard Model photon. We point out that the parameter space of this model can be probed by the experiments in the presence of an early matter-dominated era.Comment: 15 pages, 3 captioned figures. Comments are welcom

Flavor and Dark Matter Issues in Supersymmetric Models

The Standard Model of particle physics attempts to unify the fundamental forces in the Universe (except gravity). Over the years it has been tested in numerous experiments. While these experimental results strengthen our understanding of the SM, they also point out directions for physics beyond the SM. In this thesis we assume supersymmetry (SUSY) to be the new physics beyond the SM. We have tried to analyze the present status of low energy SUSY after the recent results from direct (collider) and indirect (flavor, dark matter) searches .We have tried to see the complementarity between these apparently different experimental results and search strategies from the context of low energy SUSY. We show that such complementarity does exist in well-defined models of SUSY breaking like mSUGRA, NUHM etc. The first chapter outlines the present status of the SM and discusses about the unanswered questions in SM. Keeping SUSY as the new physics beyond the SM, we also detail about its present experimental status. Chapter1 ends with the motivation and comprehensive description about each chapter of the thesis. In chapter2, we present an introduction to formal structure of SUSY algebra and the structure of MSSM. One of the such complementarities we have studied is between flavor and dark matter. In general flavor violation effects are not considered when studying DM regions in minimal SUSY models like mSUGRA. If however flavor violation does get generated through non-minimal SUSY breaking sector, one of the most susceptible regions would be the co-annihilation region for neutralino DM. In chapter 3 we consider flavor violation in the sleptonic sector and study its implications on the stau co-annihilation region. In this work we have taken flavor violation between the right-handed smuon (˜µR) and stau (˜τR). Due to this flavor mixing the lightest slepton (ĺ1) is a flavor mixed state. We have studied the effect of such ĺ11’s in the ‘stau co-annihilation’ region of the parameter space, where the relic density of the neutralinos gets depleted due to efficient co-annihilation with the staus. Limits on the flavor violating insertion in the right-handed sleptonic sector mainly comes from BR(τ → µγ). These limits are weak in some regions of the Parameter space where cancellations happen with in the amplitudes. We look for overlaps in parameter space where both the co-annihilation condition as well as the cancellations with in the amplitudes occur. We have shown that in models with non-universal Higgs boundary conditions (NUHM) overlap between these two regions is possible. The effect of flavor violation is two fold: (a) It shifts the co-annihilation regions towards lighter neutralino masses and (b) the co-annihilation cross sections would be modified with the inclusion of flavor violating diagrams which can contribute significantly. In the overlap regions, the flavor violating cross sections become comparable and in some cases even dominant to the flavor conserving ones. A comparison among the different flavor conserving and flavor violating channels, which contribute to the neutralino annihilation cross-section, is presented. One of the challenges of addressing quantitatively the complementarity problems is the lack of proper spectrum generator (numerical tools which computes SUSY sparticle spectrum in the presence of flavor violation in the sfermionic sector). For the lack of a publicly available code which considers general flavor violating terms in the renormalization group equations (RGE) we have developed a SUSY spectrum calculator, named as SuSeFLAV .It is a code written in FORTRAN language and calculates SUSY particle spectrum (with in the context of gravity mediation) in type I seesaw, in the presence of heavy right handed neutrinos (RHN). SuSeFLAV also calculates the SUSY spectrum in other type of SUSY breaking mechanisms (e.g. gauge mediation). The renormalization group (RG) flow of soft-SUSY breaking terms will generate large off-diagonal terms in the slepton sector in the presence of this RHNs, which will give rise to sizable amount of flavor violating (LFV) decays at the weak scale. Hence, in this code we also calculate the different rare LFV decays like, µ → eγ, τ → µγ etc. In SuSeFLAV the user has the freedom to choose the scale of the RHNs as well as the mixing matrix in neutrino sector. It is also possible to choose the values of the SUSY breaking input parameters at the user defined scale. The details of this package is discussed in chapter 4. Many of the present studies of complementarity between the direct and indirect searches are inadequate to address realistic scenarios, where SUSY breaking could be much more general compared to the minimal models. The work in this thesis is a step to wards this direction. Having said that, in the present thesis we have considered modifications of popular models with either explicit flavor violating terms (in some sectors) or sources of flavor violation through new particles and new couplings motivated by strong phenomenological reasons like neutrino masses. It should be noted however, the numerical tool which has been developed during the thesis can be used to address more complicated problems like with complete flavor violation in models of SUSY breaking. One of the popular mechanisms of neutrino mass generation is the so called Seesaw Mechanism. Depending on the extra matter sector present in the theory there are three basic types of them. The type I seesaw, which has singlet bright-handed neutrinos, the type II seesaw contains scalar triplets and type III seesaw has additional fermionic triplets. One of the implications of the seesaw mechanism is flavor violation in the sfermionic sector even in the presence of flavor universal SUSY breaking. This leads to a complementarity between flavor experiments and direct SUSY searches at LHC. With the announcement of the results from the reactor neutrino oscillation experiments, the reactor mixing angle (θ13) in the neutrino mixing matrix (PMNS matrix) gets fixed to a rather large non-zero value. In SO (10) GUT theories neutrino Yukawa couplings of type I seesaw gets related to the up-type fermion sector of the SM. In chapter 5 we update the status of SUSY type I seesaw assuming SO (10)- like relations for neutrino Dirac Yukawa couplings and two cases of mixing, one large, PMNS-like, and another small, CKM-like, are considered. It is shown that for the large mixing case, only a small range of parameter space with moderate tan β is still allowed. It is shown that the renormalization group induced flavor violating slepton mass terms are highly sensitive to the Higgs boundary conditions. Depending on the choice of the parameters, they can either lead to strong enhancements or cancellations with in the flavor violating terms. We have shown that in NUHM scenario there could be possible cancellations which relaxes the severe constraints imposed by lepton flavor violation compared to mSUGRA. We further updated the flavor consequences for the type II seesaw in SUSY theories. As mentioned previously in type II seesaw neutrino mass gets generated due to exchange of heavy SU (2) L triplet Higgs field. The ratio of lepton flavor violating branching ratios (e.g. BR(τ → µγ) /BR (µ → eγ) etc.) are functions of low energy neutrino masses ans mixing angles. In chapter 6 we have analyzed how much these ratios become, after the experimental measurement of θ13, in the whole SUSY parameter space or in other words how much these ratios help to constrain the SUSY parameter space. We compute different factors which can affect this ratios. We have shown that the cMSSM-like scenarios, in which slepton masses are taken to be universal at the high scale, predict 3.5 BR(τ → µγ) / BR(µ → eγ) 30 for normal hierarchical neutrino masses. We Show that the current MEG limit puts severe constraints on the light sparticle spectrum in cMSSM-like model for seesaw scale with in1013 - 1015 GeV. These constraints can be relaxed and relatively light sparticle spectrum can be still allowed by MEG result in a class of models in which the soft mass of triplet scalar is taken to be non-universal at the GUT scale. In chapter 7 we have analyzed the effect of largen eutrino Yukawa couplings on the supersymmetric lightest Higgs mass. In July 2012, ATLAS and CMS collaboration have updated the Higgs search in LHC and found an evidence of a scalar particle having mass around 125 GeV. The one-loop contribution to Higgs mass mainly depends on the top trilinear couplings (At), the SUSY scale and the top Yukawa (Yt). Thus in models with extra large Yukawa couplings at the high scale like the seesaw mechanism ,the renormalization scaling of the At parameter can get significantly affected. This in turn can modify the light Higgs mass at the weak scale for the same set of SUSY parameters. We have shown in type I seesaw with (Yν ~ 3Yu) the light Higgs mass gets reduced by 2 - 3 GeV in most of the parameter rspace. In other words the SUSY scale must be pushed high enough to achieve similar Higgs mass compared to the cMSSM scenario. We have got similar effect in SUSY type III seesaw scenario with (Yν ~Yu) at the GUT scale. In chapter 8 we summarize the results of the thesis and discuss the possible future directions

Thermalization in the presence of a time-dependent dissipation and its impact on dark matter production

A heavy meta-stable field dominates the energy density of the universe after inflation. The dissipation of this field continuously sources high-energy particles. In general, the dissipation rate of this meta-stable field can have a non-trivial time dependence. We study the impact of this time-dependent dissipation rate on the thermalization of the high-energy decay products of the meta-stable field. These energetic particles can contribute substantially to dark matter production in addition to the usual production from the thermal bath particles during reheating. We investigate the impact of this generalized dissipation on dark matter production in a model-independent way. We illustrate the parameter space that explains the observed dark matter relic abundance in various cosmological scenarios. We observed that dark matter having a mass larger than the maximum temperature attained by the thermal bath can be produced from the collision of the high-energy particles which are not yet thermalized.Comment: 26 pages, 9 figures. Comments are welcom

Indirect Searches of the Degenerate MSSM

A degenerate sfermionic particle spectrum can escape constraints from flavor physics, and at the same time evade the limits from the direct searches if the degeneracy extends to the gaugino-higgsino sector. Inspired by this, we consider a scenario where all the soft terms have an approximately common mass scale at $M_{\text{SUSY}}$, with splittings $\lesssim \mathcal{O}(10\%)$. As a result, the third generation sfermions have large to maximal (left-right) mixing, the same being the case with charginos and some sectors of the neutralino mass matrix. We study this scenario in the light of discovery of the Higgs boson with mass $\sim$ 125 GeV. We consider constraints from $B$-physics, the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon and the dark matter relic density. We find that a supersymmetric spectrum as light as 600 GeV could be consistent with all current data and also account for the observed anomalous magnetic moment of the muon within $2\sigma$. The neutralino relic density is generally too small to saturate the measured cold dark matter relic density. Direct detection limits from XENON100 and LUX put severe constraints on this scenario which will be conclusively probed by XENONnT experiment.Comment: 27 pages, 8 figures; Comments welcom

Next-to-Leading Order Unitarity Fits in the Extended Georgi-Machacek Model

Minimal triplet scalar extension of the Standard Model demanding custodial symmetry gives rise to the extended Georgi-Machacek (eGM) model. We compute one-loop corrections to all $2 \rightarrow 2$ bosonic scattering amplitudes in the eGM model, and place next-to-leading order (NLO) unitarity bounds on the quartic couplings. Additionally, we derive state-of-the-art constraints on the quartic couplings demanding the stability of the scalar potential. We perform a global fit of the eGM model to these theoretical bounds and to the latest Higgs signal strength results from the LHC detectors. In addition to the custodial symmetry, imposing a global $SU(2)_L\otimes SU(2)_R$ symmetry on the scalar potential at the electroweak scale results in the well-known Georgi-Machacek (GM) model. We assess the impact of the state-of-the-art theoretical constraints on the fit to the Higgs signal strength data in the GM model, with particular emphasis on the NLO unitarity bounds. We observe that the global fit disfavors the region where $\kappa_V$ is greater than $1.05$ with a 95.4\% confidence level. We obtain an upper limit on the absolute values of the quartic couplings to be 1.9 (4.2) and see that the absolute mass differences between the heavy Higgs bosons cannot exceed 400 GeV (380 GeV) in the GM (eGM) model. Finally, we find that the maximal mass splitting within the members of custodial symmetric multiplets is restricted to be smaller than 210 GeV in the eGM model.Comment: 58 pages, 13 figures. Comments are welcom

SuSeFLAV: A program for calculating supersymmetric spectra and lepton flavor violation

We introduce the program SuSeFLAV for computing supersymmetric mass spectra with flavor violation in various supersymmetric breaking scenarios with/without seesaw mechanism. A short user guide summarizing the compilation, executables and the input files is provided.Comment: 3 pages, latex, pramana style, proceedings for Lepton Photon 201

Current status of MSSM Higgs sector with LHC 13 TeV data

ATLAS and CMS collaborations have reported the results on the Higgs search analyzing $\sim 36$ fb$^{-1}$ data from Run-II of LHC at 13 TeV. In this work, we study the Higgs sector of the phenomenological Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, in light of the recent Higgs data, by studying separately the impact of Run-I and Run-II data. One of the major impacts of the new data on the parameter space comes from the direct searches of neutral CP-even and CP-odd heavy Higgses ($H$ and $A$, respectively) in the $H/A \to \tau^{+} \tau^{-}$ channel which disfavours high $\tan\beta$ regions more efficiently than Run-I data. Secondly, we show that the latest result of the rare radiative decay of $B$ meson imposes a slightly stronger constraint on low $\tan \beta$ and low $M_A$ region of the parameter space, as compared to its previous measurement. Further, we find that in a global fit Run-II light Higgs signal strength data is almost comparable in strength with the corresponding Run-I data. Finally, we discuss scenarios with the Heavy Higgs boson decaying into electroweakinos and third generation squarks and sleptons.Comment: 51 pages, 22 figure