Unitarity bound in the most general two Higgs doublet model

Abstract

We investigate unitarity bounds in the most general two Higgs doublet model without a discrete $Z_2$ symmetry nor CP conservation. S-wave amplitudes for two-body elastic scatterings of Nambu-Goldstone bosons and physical Higgs bosons are calculated at high energies for all possible initial and final states (14 neutral, 8 singly-charged and 3 doubly-charged states). We obtain analytic formulae for the block-diagonalized scattering matrix by the classification of the two body scattering states using the conserved quantum numbers at high energies. Imposing the condition of perturbative unitarity to the eigenvalues of the scattering matrix, constraints on the model parameters can be obtained. We apply our results to constrain the mass range of the next--to--lightest Higgs state in the model.

Comments: Version published in Physics Letters B