Top Seesaw with a Custodial Symmetry, and the 126 GeV Higgs

Abstract

The composite Higgs models based on the top seesaw mechanism commonly possess an enhanced approximate chiral symmetry, which is spontaneously broken to produce the Higgs field as the pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone bosons. The minimal model with only one extra vector-like singlet quark that mixes with the top quark can naturally give rise to a 126 GeV Higgs boson. However, without having a custodial symmetry it suffers from the weak-isospin violation constraint, which pushes the chiral symmetry breaking scale above a few TeV, causing a substantial fine-tuning for the weak scale. We consider an extension to the minimal model to incorporate the custodial symmetry by adding a vector-like electroweak doublet of quarks with hypercharge +7/6. Such a setup also protects the $Zb\bar{b}$ coupling which is another challenge for many composite Higgs models. With this addition, the chiral symmetry breaking scale can be lowered to around 1 TeV, making the theory much less fine-tuned. The Higgs is a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson of the broken O(5) symmetry. For the Higgs mass to be 126 GeV, the hypercharge +7/6 quarks should be around or below the chiral symmetry breaking scale, and are likely to be the lightest new states. The 14 TeV LHC will significantly extend the search reach of these quarks. To probe the rest of the spectrum, on the other hand, would require a higher-energy future collider.