Explanation of the hints for a 95 GeV Higgs boson within a 2-Higgs Doublet Model

A bstract We suggest an explanation for and explore the consequences of the excess around 95 GeV in the di-photon and di-tau invariant mass distributions recently reported by the CMS collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), together with the discrepancy that has long been observed at the Large Electron-Positron (LEP) collider in the bb b b ¯ invariant mass. Interestingly, the most recent findings announced by the ATLAS collaboration do not contradict, or even support, these intriguing observations. Their search in the di-photon final state similarly reveals an excess of events within the same mass range, albeit with a bit lower significance, thereby corroborating and somewhat reinforcing the observations made by CMS. We demonstrate that the lightest CP-even Higgs boson in the general 2-Higgs Doublet Model (2HDM) Type-III can explain simultaneously the observed excesses at approximately 1. 3 σ C. L. while satisfying up-to-date theoretical and experimental constraints. Moreover, the 2HDM Type-III predicts an excess in the pp ttHₒ₌ pp → t t ¯ H SM production channel of the 125 GeV Higgs boson, H SM. This effect is caused by a up to 12% enhancement of the H SM tt Yukawa coupling in comparison to that predicted by the Standard Model. Such an effect can be tested at the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC), which can either discover or exclude the scenario we suggest. This unique characteristic of the 2HDM Type-III makes this scenario with the 95 GeV resonance very attractive for further theoretical and experimental investigations at the (HL-) LHC and future colliders.