Testing extended scalar sectors in Higgs-pair production at the Large Hadron Collider

The main goal of this research project is to continue exploring the possibilities of discovering new particles and their interactions at present and future high energy particle physics experiments. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN will start operation in 2009. It will provide data from very high energy proton-proton collisions, for research in the area of particle physics. One of the major research topics at the LHC will be the search for the so-called Higgs particle, which is believed to be a crucial ingredient in the explanation of why fundamental particles have mass. Another way to say it is that particles are connected to a proposed mechanism - so called Electro-Weak Symmetry Breaking (EWSB) - explaining how matter aquires mass, a still unsolved problem in Nature. There is one theory that preditcs only one Higgs boson which is known as the Standard Model. Several other theories predict more than one Higgs boson and in most cases with different properties. Different theoretical models make different predictions for how this mechanism works. In this research programme we propose to contribute to the understanding of how exactly this mechanism works by investigating in a particular model all possible detection channels of such particles, when produced in pair, and to review their discovery potential at the LHC.