Study on the effects of the light CP-odd Higgs via the leptonic decays of pseudoscalar mesons

TL;DR

This paper investigates whether a light CP-odd Higgs boson can explain various leptonic decay anomalies of pseudoscalar mesons, finding that a universal mass and coupling are unlikely, thus challenging this mechanism.

Contribution

The study provides a comprehensive analysis of multiple meson decay modes within the light CP-odd Higgs framework, demonstrating the inconsistency of a universal mass and coupling with experimental data.

Findings

A universal mass for $A_1^0$ cannot reconcile all decay modes.

The phenomenology does not favor a light $A_1^0$ as an explanation.

Some decay modes suggest additional mechanisms beyond $A_1^0$.

Abstract

To explain the anomalously large decay rate of $\Sigma^+\to p+\mu^+\mu^-$, it was proposed that a new mechanism where a light CP-odd pseudoscalar boson of $m_{A_1^0}=214.3$ MeV makes a crucial contribution. Later, some authors have studied the transition $\pi^0\to e^+e^-$ and $\Upsilon\to \gamma A_1^0$ in terms of the same mechanism and their result indicates that with the suggested mass one cannot fit the data. This discrepancy might be caused by experimental error of $\Sigma^+\to p+\mu^+\mu^-$ because there were only a few events. Whether the mechanism is a reasonable one motivates us to investigate the transitions $\pi^0\to e^+e^-; \eta (\eta^\prime)\to \mu^+\mu^-; \eta_c\to \mu^+\mu^-; \eta_b\to\tau^+\tau^-$ within the same framework. It is noted that for $\pi^0\to e^+e^-$, the standard model (SM) prediction is smaller than the data, whereas the experimental central value of $\eta \to \mu^+\mu^-$ is also above the SM prediction. It means that there should be extra contributions from other mechanisms and the contribution of $A_1^0$ may be a possible one. Theoretically calculating the branching ratios of the concerned modes, we would check if we can obtain a universal mass for $A_1^0$ which reconcile the theoretical predictions and data for all the modes. Unfortunately, we find that it is impossible to have such a mass with the same coupling $|g_\ell|$. Therefore we conclude that the phenomenology does not favor such a light $A_1^0$, even though a small window is still open.