CP violation through particle mixing and the H-A lineshape

Abstract

We consider the possibility of looking for CP-mixing effects in two-Higgs doublet models (and particularly in the MSSM) by studying the lineshape of the CP-even (H) and CP-odd (A) neutral scalars. In most cases H and A come quite degenerate in mass, and their s-channel production would lead to nearly overlapping resonances. CP-violating effects may connect these two Higgs bosons, giving origin to one-loop particle mixing, which, due to their mass proximity, can be resonantly enhanced. The corresponding transition amplitude contains then CP-even and CP-odd components; besides the signal of intereference between both amplitudes, leading to a CP-odd asymmetry, we propose to look for the mixing probability itself, a quantity which, although CP-even, can originate only from a CP-odd amplitude. We show that, in general, the effect of such a mixing probability cannot be mimicked by (or be re-absorbed into) a simple redefinition of the H and A masses in the context of a CP-conserving model. Specifically, the effects of the CP-mixing are such that, either the mass-splitting of the H and A bosons cannot be accounted for in the absence of CP-mixing, and/or the detailed energy dependence of the produced lineshape is clearly different from the one obtained by redefining the masses, but not allowing any mixing. This analysis suggests that the detailed study of the lineshape of this Higgs system may provide valuable information on the CP nature of the underlying theory.