Effective Lagrangian of the two Higgs doublet model

Abstract

We consider the two Higgs doublet model extension of the standard model in the limit where all physical scalar particles are very heavy, too heavy, in fact, to be experimentally produced in forthcoming experiments. The symmetry-breaking sector can thus be described by an effective chiral Lagrangian. We obtain the values of the coefficients of the O(p4) operators relevant to the oblique corrections and investigate to what extent some nondecoupling effects may remain at low energies. A comparison with recent CERN LEP data shows that this model is indistinguishable from the standard model with one doublet and with a heavy Higgs boson, unless the scalar mass splittings are large.