Why Do We Need Multiple Higgs Bosons?

[Silviu]

Hello! I read many things about the importance of Higgs boson for explaining the electroweak symmetry breaking and how thus W and Z boson gain mass. However I am not sure I understand why physicists are looking for more massive Higgs. Can someone explain to me what would be their importance?

 

[Vanadium 50]

How do we know there's only one if we don't look to see if there are more?

 

[Silviu]

How do we know there's only one if we don't look to see if there are more?

Yes, yes I agree. My question is, what are the implications of having more. Like we knew that we need the one we found in order to explain electroweak symmetry breaking. What are the theoretical implications of having more?

 

[mfb]

That depends on what exactly would be found.
Supersymmetry necessarily has more Higgs bosons, but it is not the only approach that predicts more than one Higgs-like boson.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Supersymmetry requires more than one Higgs boson, so that's one implication. Other than that, it's hard to describe the implications of something that hasn't been discovered - much less having its properties measured - yet.