Singlet neighbors of the Higgs boson

The newly discovered resonance at 125 GeV has properties consistent with the Standard Model (SM) Higgs particle, although some production and/or decay channels currently exhibit O(1) deviations. We consider scenarios with a new scalar singlet field with couplings to electrically charged vector-like matter, focusing particularly on the case when the singlet mass lies within a narrow similar to few GeV window around the Higgs mass. Such a 'singlet neighbor' presents novel mechanisms for modifying the observed properties of the Higgs boson. For instance, even a small amount of the Higgs-singlet mixing can lead to a significant enhancement of the apparent diphoton rate. Alternatively, the Higgs may decay into the nearby singlet, along with a very light, very soft mediator particle, in which case there can be O(1) enhancement to the apparent diphoton rate even for similar to TeV-scale charged vector-like matter. We also explore models in which vector-like fermions mix with the SM leptons, causing the simultaneous enhancement of gamma gamma and suppression of tau(tau) over bar Higgs branching ratios. Our scenario can be tested with the accumulating LHC data by probing for the di-resonance structure of the 125 GeV diphoton signal, as well as the relative shift in the resonance location between the diphoton and four-lepton modes.