Higgs Decays in Gauge Extensions of the Standard Model

Abstract

We explore the phenomenology of virtual spin-1 contributions to the h to gamma gamma and h to Z gamma decay rates in gauge extensions of the standard model. We consider generic lorentz and gauge invariant vector self-interactions, which can have non-trivial structure after diagonalizing the quadratic part of the action. Such features are phenomenologically relevant in models where the electroweak gauge bosons mix with additional spin-1 fields, such as occurs in little higgs models, extra dimensional models, strongly coupled variants of electroweak symmetry breaking, and other gauge extensions of the standard model. In models where non-renormalizable operators mix field strengths of gauge groups, the one-loop higgs decay amplitudes can be logarithmically divergent, and we provide power counting for the size of the relevant counter-term. We provide an example calculation in a 4-site moose model that contains degrees of freedom that model the effects of vector and axial vector resonances arising from TeV scale strong dynamics.