Based on the low-energy effective Hamiltonian, we calculate new physics corrections to the branching ratio and the differential distributions of the rare decay $\overrightarrow{B}{X}_s\gamma \gamma$ induced by the new gluonic and electroweak charged-Higgs penguin diagrams in the general two-Higgs-doublet model with the restriction ${\lambda }_{\mathrm{ij}}^{U,D}=0\mathrm{}$ for $i\ne j.\mathrm{}$ Within the considered parameter space, we see the following: (a) the standard model predictions of $\mathcal{B}\left(\overrightarrow{B}{X}_s\gamma \gamma \right)$ and $A_{\mathrm{FB}}$ have a moderate $m_s$ dependence; (b) in model III, the prediction of the branching ratio $\mathcal{B}\left(\overrightarrow{B}{X}_s\gamma \gamma \right)$ ranges from one-third to three times the standard model prediction, but is highly correlated with that of $\mathcal{B}\left(\overrightarrow{B}{X}_s\gamma \right);$ (c) the new physics enhancement to the branching ratio $\mathcal{B}\left(\overrightarrow{B}{X}_s\gamma \gamma \right)$ in model II can be as large as $(30\mathrm{}–50)\%;$ (d) the contribution from one-particle reducible diagrams is dominant and hence four normalized differential distributions are insensitive to the variation of scale μ and possible new physics corrections; (e) because of the smallness of its decay rate and the long-distance background, the $\overrightarrow{B}{X}_s\gamma \gamma$ decay is not a better process in detecting new physics than the $\overrightarrow{B}{X}_s\gamma$ decay.

• Received 20 November 2000

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.64.014012