Lectures on perturbative unitarity and decoupling in Higgs physics

Abstract

These lectures are a pedagogical introduction to the application of perturbative unitarity to Higgs physics within and beyond the Standard Model (SM). I begin with a review of how perturbative unitarity arises from quantum mechanical scattering theory and apply it to the classic problem of longitudinal vector boson scattering in the SM to derive the famous upper bound on the Higgs boson mass. I then consider extended Higgs sectors, using the two-Higgs-doublet model, the scalar septet model, and the Georgi-Machacek model as case studies. I discuss the resulting Higgs coupling sum rules as well as the intertwined constraints on masses and couplings of the additional Higgs bosons in these models, highlighting the connection between perturbative unitarity and the decoupling limit. I finish with a direct review of the decoupling limit in the two-Higgs-doublet model and a digression on the alignment limit. These notes are based on lectures delivered over the past few years in a graduate-level course on beyond-the-SM phenomenology and are meant as a companion volume to my TASI 2013 lectures on Higgs physics.