Secondary lepton distributions as a probe of the top--higgs coupling at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper investigates how secondary lepton distributions in top-Higgs production at the LHC can reveal the nature of the top-Higgs coupling, emphasizing the importance of including decay and background effects for accurate analysis.

Contribution

It highlights the sensitivity of lepton distributions to the top-Higgs coupling and discusses the challenges posed by background processes and the need for comprehensive analysis including decays and off-resonance backgrounds.

Findings

Lepton distributions are sensitive to top-Higgs coupling variations.

Background processes significantly obscure the signals of anomalous couplings.

Including decays and off-resonance backgrounds is crucial for accurate analysis.

Abstract

The differential distributions in rapidity and angles of the secondary lepton in the associated production of the top quark pair and higgs boson in proton-proton collisions at the LHC are quite sensitive to the top-higgs coupling. However, the effects of anomalous couplings of the most general t anti-t h interaction with operators of dimension-six that are clearly visible in the signal of the associated production of the top quark pair and higgs boson are to large extent obscured by the background sub-processes with the same final state. This means that analyses of such effects, in addition to higher order corrections that are usually calculated for the on-shell top quarks and higgs boson, should include their decays and possibly complete off resonance background contributions to the corresponding exclusive reactions.