On the structure of anomalous composite Higgs models

Abstract

We describe the anomaly structure of a composite Higgs model in which the SO(5) / SO(4) coset structure of the minimal model is extended by an additional, non-linearly realised U(1)η$$U(1)_{\eta }$$. In addition, we show that the effective Lagrangian admits a term that, like the Wess–Zumino–Witten term in the chiral Lagrangian for QCD, is not invariant under the non-linearly realised symmetries, but rather changes by a total derivative. This term is unlike the Wess–Zumino–Witten term in that it does not arise from anomalies. If present, it may give rise to the rare decay η→hW+W-Z$$\eta \rightarrow h W^+ W^-Z$$. The phenomenology of the singlet in this model differs from that in a model based on SO(6) / SO(5), in that couplings to both gluons and photons, arising via anomalies, are present. We show that while some tuning is needed to accommodate flavour and electroweak precision constraints, the model is no worse than the minimal model in this regard.