The standard-model Higgs boson couples to quarks through a parity-even scalar $Hq{\bar q}$ coupling. We show that the rare Higgs decay $H\to VZ$, where $V$ is a vector quarkonium state such as $J/ψ$ ($c{\bar c}$) or $Υ(1S)$ ($b{\bar b}$), can be used to search for the presence of a parity-odd pseudoscalar $Hq{\bar q}$ coupling. Since both $V$ and $Z$ can decay to a pair of charged leptons, this presents an experimentally-clean channel that can be observed at the high-luminosity LHC or a future hadron collider. The P-even and P-odd $Hq{\bar q}$ couplings can be measured by analyzing the angular distribution of the final-state leptons.
Possible extensions of the Standard Model predict modifications of the Higgs couplings to gluons and to the SM top quark. The values of these two couplings can, in general, be independent. We discuss a way to measure these interactions by studying the Higgs production at high p_T within an effective field theory formalism. We also propose an observable r_\pm with reduced theoretical errors and suggest its experimental interpretation.
We systematically study model-independent constraints on the three generic charged Higgs couplings to $b$-quarks and up-type quarks. While existing LHC searches have focussed on the $tb$ coupling, we emphasize that the LHC plays a crucial role in probing also $ub$ and $cb$ couplings, since constraints from flavor physics are weak. In particular we propose various new searches that can significantly extend the present reach on the parameter space by: i) looking for light charged Higgses that decay into $ub$-quarks, ii) probing charged Higgs couplings to light and top quarks using multi-$b$-jet …
We consider the potential of the Higgs boson pair production process to probe the light quark Yukawa couplings. We show within an effective theory description that the prospects of constraining enhanced first generation light quark Yukawa couplings in Higgs pair production are similar to other methods and channels, due to a coupling of two Higgs bosons to two fermions. Higgs pair production can hence also probe if the Higgs sector couples non-linearly to the light quark generations. For the second generation, we show that by employing charm tagging for the Higgs boson pair decaying to $c\bar{c…
A method is proposed to directly probe the Higgs boson compositeness using the unique characteristics of a boosted Higgs boson produced in association with a weak gauge boson ($W^{\pm},Z$). The discovery potential for the upcoming LHC running is presented, showing that compositeness scales up to 3 TeV can be probed at the LHC with an integrated luminosity of $\mathcal{L}=3000$ fb$^{-1}$ collected at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV.
We point out unique relations between the decay widths for leptoquarks and Higgs bosons that can be used to test the unification of quarks and leptons at the TeV scale. We discuss the main predictions of the minimal theory for quark-lepton unification and show how the different decays for leptoquarks and Higgses are related by the symmetry of the theory.
In the Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC), a measurement of the Higgs CP mixing through $e^{+} e^{-} \rightarrow Z H \rightarrow l^{+} l^{-}(e^{+} e^{-} /μ^{+} μ^{-}) H(\rightarrow b \bar{b} / c \bar{c} / g g)$ process is presented, with $5.6\ \mbox{ab}^{-1}$ $e^{+} e^{-}$ collision data at the center-of-mass energy of $240\ \mathrm{GeV}$. In this study, the CP-violating parameter $\tilde{c}_{Z γ}$ is constrained between the region of $ -0.30$ and $0.27$ and $\tilde{c}_{Z Z}$ between $-0.06$ and $0.06$ at $68\%$ confidence level. This study demonstrates the great potential of probing H…
Two Higgs doublet extensions of the standard model, such as supersymmetry, predict the existence of charged Higgs bosons. We explore the reach for TeV-scale charged Higgs bosons through their associated production with top quarks, and their decay to boosted top jets and $μ_x$ tagged boosted bottom jets, at a 14 TeV CERN Large Hadron Collider and at a 100 TeV Future Circular Collider. In particular, we show the moderate $\tanβ$ "wedge" region of parameter space cannot be probed at the Large Hadron Collider for TeV-scale $H^\pm$ because the cross section is too small. However, a 100 TeV future p…
The program HiggsSignals confronts the predictions of models with arbitrary Higgs sectors with the available Higgs signal rate and mass measurements, resulting in a likelihood estimate. A new version of the program, HiggsSignals-2, is presented that contains various improvements in its functionality and applicability. In particular, the new features comprise improvements in the theoretical input framework and the handling of possible complexities of beyond-the-SM Higgs sectors, as well as the incorporation of experimental results in the form of Simplified Template Cross Section (STXS) measurem…
We study angular observables in the $e^+e^-\to Z H\to \ell^+ \ell^-\,b\bar{b}$ channel at future circular $e^+ e^-$ colliders such as CEPC and FCC-ee. Taking into account the impact of realistic cut acceptance and detector effects, we forecast the precision of six angular asymmetries at CEPC (FCC-ee) with center-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s} =$ 240 GeV and 5 (30) ${\rm ab}^{-1}$ integrated luminosity. We then determine the projected sensitivity to a range of operators relevant for the Higgs-strahlung process in the dimension-6 Higgs EFT. Our results show that angular observables provide complementa…
A coupling of a scalar, charged under an unbroken global U(1) symmetry, to the Standard Model via the Higgs portal is one of the simplest gateways to a dark sector. Yet, for masses $m_{S}\geq m_{H}/2$ there are few probes of such an interaction. In this note we evaluate the sensitivity to the Higgs portal coupling of di-Higgs boson production at the LHC as well as at a future high energy hadron collider, FCC-hh, taking into account the full momentum dependence of the process. This significantly impacts the sensitivity compared to estimates of changes in the Higgs-coupling based on the effectiv…
The Higgs boson can mix with a singlet scalar that dynamically generates the Majorana mass of the right-handed neutrino $N_R$. We show that even a tiny mixing between the Higgs boson and a `decoupled' singlet scalar allows for Higgs-mediated pair production of $N_R$ without significant mixings between the active neutrinos and $N_R$, and thus testable at colliders via a characteristic signal of two same-sign same-flavor lepton pairs, plus missing energy. We demonstrate that this search channel is mostly background-free in $pp$-collision and can be a highly sensitive probe of the Higgs-singlet m…
The hypothesis of dark matter interacting with the standard model uniquely via the Higgs portal is severely challenged by experiments. However, if dark matter is a fermion, the Higgs-portal interaction implies the presence of mediators, which can change the phenomenology significantly. This article discusses the impact of weakly-interacting mediators on the dark-matter relic abundance, direct detection, and collider searches. At the LHC, a typical signature of Higgs-portal fermion dark matter features soft leptons and missing energy, similarly to gaugino production in models with supersymmetry…
We propose a new method to determine the coupling of the Higgs boson to charm quarks, via Higgs production in association with a charm-tagged jet: $pp\to hc$. As a first estimate, we find that at the LHC with 3000 fb$^{-1}$ it should be possible to derive a constraint of order one, relative to the SM value of the charm Yukawa coupling. As a byproduct of this analysis, we present an estimate of the exclusive $pp \to hD^{(*)}$ electroweak cross section. Within the SM, the latter turns out to be not accessible at the LHC even in the high-luminosity phase.
We analyze the possibility of probing anomalous Higgs couplings in the rare decays $H \to Z V$, $V$ being a vector quarkonium state. These rare decays involve both gauge as well as the Yukawa sectors and either of them can potentially be anomalous. We show that the branching fractions for $H \to Z V$ decays in Standard Model are small, making it a sensitive probe for anomalous Higgs couplings originating from physics beyond Standard Model. Moreover, as both $V$ and $Z$ can decay into pair of charged leptons, they provide experimentally clean channels and future LHC runs should observe such dec…
The Higgs boson may well be a composite scalar with a finite extension in space. Owing to the momentum dependence of its couplings the imprints of such a composite pseudo Goldstone Higgs may show up in the tails of various kinematic distributions at the LHC, distinguishing it from an elementary state. From the bottom up we construct the momentum dependent form factors to capture the interactions of the composite Higgs with the weak gauge bosons. We demonstrate their impact in the differential distributions of various kinematic parameters for the $pp\rightarrow Z^*H\rightarrow l^+l^-b\bar{b}$ c…
The violation of CP symmetry is one of Sakharov's conditions for the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the Universe. Currently known sources of CP violation in the quark and neutrino sectors are insufficient to account for this. Is CP also violated in the Higgs sector? Could the SM-like Higgs boson be a mixture of even and odd CP states of an extended Higgs sector? With what precision could such effects be measured at future electron-positron colliders? These questions will be discussed in the light of the latest and ongoing studies at ILC.
Despite the discovery of a Higgs boson h(125GeV) at the LHC Run-1, its self-interaction has fully evaded direct experimental probe so far. Such self-interaction is vital for electroweak symmetry breaking, vacuum stability and electroweak phase transition, and Higgs inflation. It is a most likely place to encode new physics beyond the standard model. We parametrize such new physics by model-independent dimension-6 effective operators, and study their tests via Higgs pair production at hadron colliders. We analyze three major di-Higgs production channels at parton level, and compare the paramete…
The spontaneous muonium-to-antimuonium conversion is one of the interesting charged lepton flavor violation processes. MACE is the next generation experiment to probe such a phenomenon. In models with a triplet Higgs to generate neutrino masses, such as Type-II seesaw and its variant, this process can be induced by the doubly-charged Higgs contained in it. In this article, we study the prospect of MACE to probe these models via the muonium-to-antimuonium transitions. After considering the limits from $μ^+ \rightarrow e^+ γ$ and $μ^+ \rightarrow e^+ e^- e^+$, we find that MACE could probe a par…
Fermionic top-partners arise in models such as Composite Higgs and Little Higgs. They modify Higgs properties, in particular how the Higgs couples to top quarks. Alas, there is a low-energy cancellation acting in the coupling of the Higgs boson to gluons and photons. As a result of this cancellation, no information about the spectrum and couplings of the top-partners can be obtained in gluon fusion to Higgs, just the overall new physics scale. In this paper we show that this is not the case when hard radiation is taken into account. Indeed, differential distributions in Higgs plus jets are sen…
We demonstrate that four top-quark production is a powerful tool to constrain the top Yukawa coupling. The constraint is robust in the sense that it does not rely on the Higgs boson decay. Taking into account the projection of the $t\bar{t}H$ production by the ATLAS collaobration, we obtain a bound on Higgs boson width, $Γ_H\leq 3.1~Γ_H^{\rm SM}$, at the 14 TeV LHC with an integrated luminosity of $300~{\rm fb}^{-1}$. Increasing the luminosity to $500~{\rm fb}^{-1}$ yields $Γ_H\leq 2.1~Γ_H^{\rm SM}$.
Measuring the triple Higgs coupling is a crucial task in the LHC and future collider experiments. We apply the Message Passing Neural Network (MPNN) to the study of the non-resonant Higgs pair production process $pp \to hh$ in the final state with $2b + 2\ell + E_{\rm T}^{\rm miss}$ at the LHC. Although the MPNN can improve the signal significance, it is still challenging to observe such a process at the LHC. We find that a $2σ$ upper bound (including a 10\% systematic uncertainty) on the production cross section of the Higgs pair is 3.7 times the predicted SM cross section at the LHC with the…
One of the puzzles of the SM is the large hierarchy between the Yukawa couplings of different flavours. Yukawa couplings of the first and the second generation are constrained only very weakly so far. However, one can obtain large deviations in the Yukawa couplings in several New Physics (NP) models, such as e.g. models with new vector-like quarks, or new Higgs bosons that couple naturally to individual fermion families. In this work, we investigate the potential bounds on the NP Higgs Yukawa couplings modification $ κ_f$ for light quarks from double-Higgs at the LHC, starting from a model ind…
If neutrino tribimaximal mixing is explained by a non-Abelian discrete symmetry such as $A_4$, $T_7$, $Δ(27)$, etc., the charged-lepton Higgs sector has a $Z_3$ residual symmetry (lepton flavor triality), which may be observed directly in the decay chain $H^0 \to ψ_2^0 \barψ_2^0$, then $ψ_2^0 (\barψ_2^0) \to l_i^+ l_j^- ~(i \neq j)$, where $H^0$ is a standard-model-like Higgs boson and $ψ_2^0$ is a scalar particle needed for realizing the original discrete symmetry. If kinematically allowed, this unusual and easily detectable decay is observable at the LHC with 1 fb$^{-1}$ for E_{cm} = 7 TeV.
We study single top production in association with a charged Higgs in the type II two Higgs doublet model at the Large Hadron Collider. The polarization of the top, reflected in the angular distributions of its decay products, can be a sensitive probe of new physics in its production. We present theoretically expected polarizations of the top for top charged-Higgs production, which is significantly different from that in the closely related process of t-W production in the Standard Model. We then show that an azimuthal symmetry, constructed from the decay lepton angular distribution in the lab…
We analyse the signal sensitivity of multi-lepton final states at collider that can arise from doubly and singly charged Higgs decay in a type-II seesaw framework. We assume triplet vev to be very small and degenerate masses for both the charged Higgs states. The leptonic branching ratio of doubly and singly charged Higgs states have a large dependency on the neutrino oscillation parameters, lightest neutrino mass scale, as well as neutrino mass hierarchy. We explore this as well as the relation between the leptonic branching ratios of the singly and doubly charged Higgs states in detail. We e…
We explore the room for possible deviations from the Standard Model (SM) Higgs boson coupling structure in a systematic study of Higgs coupling scale factor benchmark scenarios using the latest signal rate measurements from the Tevatron and LHC experiments. We employ chi-squared fits performed with HiggsSignals, which takes into account detailed information on signal efficiencies and major correlations of theoretical and experimental uncertainties. All considered scenarios allow for additional non-standard Higgs boson decay modes, and various assumptions for constraining the total decay width …
We propose a method to probe the coupling of the Higgs to strange quarks by tagging strange jets at future lepton colliders. For this purpose we describe a jet-flavor observable, $J_F$, that is correlated with the flavor of the quark associated with the hard part of the jet. Using this variable, we set up a strangeness tagger aimed at studying the decay $h\to s\bar{s}$. We determine the sensitivity of our method to the strange Yukawa coupling, and find it to be of the order of the standard-model expectation.
We propose a novel idea for probing the Higgs boson couplings through the measurement of hadronic event shape distributions in the decay of the Higgs boson at lepton colliders. The method provides a unique test of the Higgs boson couplings and of QCD effects in the decay of the Higgs boson. It can be used to probe the Yukawa couplings of the light quarks and to further test the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking. From a case study for the proposed Circular Electron-Positron Collider, assuming a hypothesis of SM-like theory, light-quark couplings with a strength greater than 9% of the b…
We consider two Higgs doublet models (THDMs) with both the Higgs potential and Yukawa interactions being aligned, which we call "double-aligned THDMs". In this scenario, coupling constants of the discovered Higgs boson to the Standard Model (SM) particles are identical to those of the SM Higgs boson, and flavor changing neutral currents via neutral Higgs bosons do not appear at tree level. We investigate current constraints and future prospects of the model by using measurements from flavor experiments and data of multi-lepton final states at LHC. Especially, we focus on the electroweak pair p…
Although the existence of Dark Matter (DM) has been suggested by various astrophysical observations, it has not yet been discovered today. We can assume a scenario in which the particles that account for the DM can interact with the Standard Model particles only through their couplings with the Higgs sector, the so-called Higgs-portal model. This model can be investigated by collider experiment using the invisible decay of Higgs boson. In this study, we evaluate the search ability of International Linear Collider (ILC) for invisible decay of the Higgs using International Large Detector (ILD) f…
New physics coupled to the Higgs boson may hide it in the standard decay channels to be investigated at LHC. We consider the models where new invisible dominant decay modes of the Higgs boson are responsible for this hiding. We propose to study at LHC the weak boson production associated with heavy quarks: our analysis revealed that boson pair invariant mass distribution is sensitive to both mass and width of the invisible Higgs boson, if it is not too far from the weak boson pair threshold. We present tree-level results for the most relevant cases of top quarks and of bottom quarks in Standar…
We give a general decomposition of the h -> VF amplitude where V={W,Z} and F is a generic leptonic or hadronic final state, in the standard model (SM), and in the context of a general effective field theory. The differential distributions for F=l^+l^-, l nu (l =e, mu) are reported, and we show how such distributions can be used to determine modified Higgs couplings that cannot be directly extracted from a global fit to Higgs signal strengths. We also demonstrate how rare h -> VP decays, where P is a single hadron, with SM rates in the 10^{-5} range, can be used to provide complementary informa…
We consider the prospect of lightest neutralino (${\tilde χ}_1^0$) as a dark matter candidate in the light of recent interesting observations from the XENON100 and CDMS-II experiments in minimal supergravity framework with large $\tanβ$ and non-vanishing $A_0$. Within the WMAP satisfied zone, there is a large direct detection reach of lighter ${\tilde χ}_1^0$ in the lighter Higgs boson mediated resonance annihilation domain of the above scenario. It is seen that the heavier Higgs boson plays a dominating role in the ${\tilde χ}_1^0-p$ cross-section in the associated zone of parameter space in …
We study several aspects of supersymmetric models with a $U(1)_R$ symmetry where the Higgs doublet is identified with the superpartner of a lepton. We derive new, stronger bounds on the gaugino masses based on current measurements, and also propose ways to probe the model up to scales of $\mathcal{O}(10\, \textrm{TeV})$ at future $e^+e^-$ colliders. Since the $U(1)_R$ symmetry cannot be exact, we analyze the effects of $R$-symmetry breaking on neutrino masses and proton decay. In particular, we find that getting the neutrino mixing angles to agree with experiments in a minimal model requires a…
We review the potential of the LHC to detect a very light CP-odd Higgs boson of the NMSSM, $a_1$, through its direct production in association with a bottom-quark pair at large tan$β$. We also review the LHC discovery potential of the two lightest CP-even Higgs states, decaying into two lighter Higgs states or into the lightest CP-odd Higgs state and the $Z$ gauge boson.
After the discovery of a Standard Model (SM) like Higgs boson, naturalness strongly favors the next to the Minimal Supersymmetric SM (NMSSM). In this letter, we point out that the most natural NMSSM predicts the following CP-even Higgs $H_i$ sector: (A) $H_2$ is the SM-like Higgs boson with mass pushed-upward by a lighter $H_1$ with mass overwhelmingly within $[m_{H_2}/2,m_{H_2}]$; (B) $m_{H_3}\simeq 2μ/\sin2β\gtrsim300$ GeV; (C) $H_3$ has a significant coupling to top quarks and can decay to $H_1H_2$ with a large branching ratio. Using jet substructure we show that all the three Higgs bosons …
In this work, we investigate the degenerate heavy Higgs bosons in the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM) by introducing vector-like particles. Such an extension is well motivated from the top-down view since some grand unified theories usually predict the existence of singlet scalars and vector-like particles at weak scale. Under the constraints from the LHC and dark matter experiments, we find that (1) the null results of searching for high mass resonances have tightly constrained the parameter space; (2) two degenerate heavy singlet Higgs bosons $h_2$ and $a_1$ can sizably…
The Higgs self-interactions play a crucial role for exploring the underlying mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking and the nature of the phase transition involved. In this article, we propose to probe the quartic Higgs self-interaction at lepton and hadron colliders, via the di-Higgs productions. We analyze the contributions of the quartic Higgs coupling, including the renormalization of the cubic Higgs coupling and the modification of the $VVhh$ form factor, to the vector-boson-fusion and the vector-boson associated di-Higgs productions at one-loop level. Such an effect is independent of…
One and two-jet observables of dimension-7 Higgs-gluon coupling operators are studied as probes of possible deviations from the top-loop induced gluon-Higgs coupling. We discuss the case of both a scalar as well as a pseudo-scalar Higgs boson and show that higher order operators can give visible deviations from Standard Model distribution shapes.
The ATLAS and CMS collaborations of the LHC have observed that the Higgs boson decays into the bottom quark-antiquark pair, and have also established that the Higgs coupling with the top quark-antiquark pair is instrumental in one of the modes for Higgs production. This underlines the discovery of the Yukawa force at the LHC. We demonstrate the impact of this discovery on the Higgs properties that are related to the dynamics of electroweak symmetry breaking. We show that these measurements have considerably squeezed the allowed window for new physics contributing to the Higgs couplings with th…
We investigate the di-Higgs events through $Z_H$-pair production at the CERN Large Hadron Collider including the pure next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD correction and the $gg$-fusion contribution in the framework of the littlest Higgs model with $T$ parity. We employ the diagram subtraction scheme in the QCD NLO calculations to avoid double counting and keep the convergence of the perturbative QCD description for the $Z_H$-pair production. We investigate the dependence of the leading order and QCD corrected integrated cross sections on the renormalization/factorization scale, and find that the t…
We consider a singlet extension of the Standard Model (SM) with a spontaneous $Z_2$ breaking and study the gluon-gluon fusion production of the heavy scalar, with subsequent decay into a pair of SM-like Higgs bosons. We find that an on-shell interference effect can notably enhance the resonant di-Higgs production rate up to 40\%. In addition, consistently taking into account both the on-shell and off-shell interference effects between the heavy scalar and the SM di-Higgs diagrams significantly improves the HL-LHC and HE-LHC reach in this channel. As an example, within an effective field theory…
The electroweak symmetry breaking (EWSB) mechanism is still an undecided question in particle physics. We propose to utilize the single top quark and Higgs associated production ($th$), $Zh$ production via gluon fusion at the LHC to probe the couplings between the Higgs and the gauge bosons and further to test the EWSB. We demonstrate that the $th$ and $gg\to Zh$ productions are sensitive to the relative sign of couplings ($ht\bar{t}$, $hWW$) and ($ht\bar{t}$, $hZZ$), respectively. We find that the relative sign between $hWW$ and $hZZ$ couplings could be fully determined after combining the pr…
We study the tagging of Higgs exotic decay signals using different types of deep neural networks (DNNs), focusing on the $W^\pm h$ associated production channel followed by Higgs decaying into $n$ $b$-quarks with $n=4$, 6 and 8. All the Higgs decay products are collected into a fat-jet, to which we apply further selection using the DNNs. Three kinds of DNNs are considered, namely convolutional neural network (CNN), recursive neural network (RecNN) and particle flow network (PFN). The PFN can achieve the best performance because its structure allows enfolding more information in addition to the…
We study how effects of the CP violation can be observed indirectly by precision measurements of Higgs boson couplings at a future Higgs factory such as the international linear collider. We consider two Higgs doublet models with the softly broken discrete symmetry. We find that by measuring the Higgs boson couplings very precisely we are able to distinguish the two Higgs doublet model with CP violation from the CP conserving one.
Determining the spin and the parity quantum numbers of the recently discovered Higgs-like boson at the LHC is a matter of great importance. In this paper, we consider the possibility of using the kinematics of the tagging jets in Higgs production via the vector boson fusion (VBF) process to test the tensor structure of the Higgs-vector boson ($HVV$) interaction and to determine the spin and CP properties of the observed resonance. We show that an anomalous $HVV$ vertex, in particular its explicit momentum dependence, drastically affects the rapidity between the two scattered quarks and their t…
The recent observation of a Higgs boson at the LHC and experimental confirmation of nonvanishing neutrino-mixing parameter sin(theta_13) offer important means to test physics beyond the standard model. We explore this within the context of the scotogenic model, in which neutrinos acquire mass radiatively via one-loop interactions with dark matter. Starting with a two-parameter neutrino-mixing matrix which is consistent with the latest neutrino-oscillation data at the one-sigma level, we derive different sets of solutions for the Yukawa couplings of the nonstandard particles in the model and us…
A Higgs portal in the form of the operator $|H|^2$ provides a minimal and theoretically motivated link between the Standard Model (SM) and new physics. While Higgs portals can be constrained well by exotic Higgs decays if the beyond-the-SM states are light, testing scenarios where these particles are kinematically inaccessible is known to be challenging. We explore the sensitivity of future hadron collider measurements of $ZZ \to 4 \ell$ production in constraining Higgs portal interactions. It is shown that by using a matrix-element based kinematic discriminant the reach of the high-luminosity…
