Flavor changing neutral currents, an extended scalar sector, and the Higgs production rate at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

We study extensions of the standard model with additional colored scalar fields which can couple directly to quarks. Natural suppression of flavor changing neutral currents implies minimal flavor violation, and fixes the scalars to transform as $(\mathbf{8},\mathbf{2}{)}_{1/2}$ under the $SU(3)\times SU(2)\times U(1)$ gauge symmetry. We explore the phenomenology of the standard model with one additional $(\mathbf{8},\mathbf{2}{)}_{1/2}$ scalar, and discuss how this extension can modify flavor physics and the Higgs boson production rate at the LHC. Custodial $SU(2)$ symmetry can be implemented for the octet scalars since they transform as a real color representation. Additional weak scale degrees of freedom needed for gauge unification are discussed.