A window for the mixed same-sign signature in the type-II seesaw models

Abstract

The mass splitting between the doubly and singly charged members of the Higgs triplet of the type-II seesaw model is usually treated as a free parameter in the collider literature. Electroweak loops fix it to $767$ to $841$~MeV over the mass range considered here once the quartic coupling $\lambda_4$ is set to zero at the renormalization scale $\overline\mu = M_{H^{\pm\pm}}$. Moving that scale by a factor of two in either direction moves the loop value by $208$~MeV at $200$~GeV, falling to $42$~MeV at $1$~TeV. At the reference splitting of $852$~MeV, the transition $H^{\pm\pm} \to H^\pm W^{\pm(*)}$ takes $40\%$ ($7\%$) of the total width at the crossover triplet vacuum expectation value for a doubly charged Higgs mass of $200$~GeV ($500$~GeV). That splitting is also where the partonic counting of that rate fails. Evaluated from hadronic data, the counting overestimates the rate by a factor $1.46 \pm 0.05$ at a splitting of $852$~MeV and underestimates it by a factor $4.87 \pm 0.09$ at $200$~MeV. Whether the mixed same-sign topology survives is then a condition on $\lambda_4$. The same channel moves the two published exclusion boundaries in opposite directions, by $-1.4\%$ and $+24.5\%$, at the level of branching ratios and at fixed experimental acceptance.