Exploring the Di-Photon Decay of a Light Higgs Boson in the MSSM With Explicit CP Violation

Abstract

The di-photon decay channel of the lightest Higgs boson is considerd as a probe to explore CP violation in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM). The scalar/pseudo-scalar mixing is considered along with CP violation entering through the Higgs-sfermion-sfermion couplings, with and without light sparticles. The impact of a light stop on the decay width and Branching Ratio (BR) is established through a detailed study of the amplitude of the process H1 --> gamma.gamma. The other sparticles have little influence even when they are light. With a suitable combination of other MSSM parameters, a light stop can change the BR by more than 50 % with a CP-violating phase phi_mu ~ 90 deg., while the change is almost nil with a heavy stop.

27 pages; LaTeX; minor changes in text; reference added; corrected version to appear in EPJC