Allowed and observable phases in two-Higgs-doublet Standard Models

Abstract

In Quantum Field Theory models of electro-weak interactions with spontaneously broken gauge invariance, renormalizability limits to four the degree of the Higgs potential, whose minima determine the possible vacuum states in tree approximation. Through the discussion of some simple variants of the Standard Model with two Higgs doublets, we show that, in some cases, the technical limit imposed by renormalizability can prevent the observability of some phases of the system, that would be otherwise allowed by the symmetry of the Higgs potential. An extension of the scalar sector through suitable SU$_2$ singlet particle fields can resolve this {\em unnatural} limitation.