Higgs boson decays to four fermions through an Abelian hidden sector

Abstract

We consider a generic Abelian hidden sector that couples to the standard model only through gauge-invariant renormalizable operators. This allows the exotic Higgs boson to mix with the standard model Higgs boson, and the exotic Abelian gauge boson to mix with the standard model hypercharge gauge boson. One immediate consequence of spontaneous breaking of the hidden sector gauge group is the possible decay of the lightest Higgs boson into four fermions through intermediate exotic gauge bosons. We study the implications of this decay for Higgs boson phenomenology at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider and the CERN Large Hadron Collider. Our emphasis is on the four-lepton final state. © 2008 The American Physical Society.