Constraints on anomalous color dipole operators from Higgs boson production at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper investigates how anomalous color dipole operators, which could indicate physics beyond the standard model, affect Higgs production at the LHC and derives constraints on these operators from various processes involving top, bottom, and light quarks.

Contribution

It provides new constraints on flavor-diagonal anomalous color magnetic and electric dipole operators using Higgs production data at the LHC, extending previous bounds from top-quark pair production.

Findings

Constraints on top-quark CMDM and CEDM from Higgs production are comparable to existing bounds.

Limits on bottom-quark and light-quark dipole couplings are derived from associated Higgs production processes.

The study demonstrates the sensitivity of Higgs production channels to new physics operators.

Abstract

Physics beyond the standard model (SM) can be parameterized with an effective Lagrangian that respects the symmetries of the standard model and contains many operators of dimension six. We consider the subset of these operators that is responsible for flavor diagonal anomalous color magnetic (CMDM) and electric (CEDM) dipole couplings between quarks and gluons. Invariance of these operators under the SM implies that they contribute to Higgs boson production at the LHC and we study the corresponding constraints that can be placed on them. For the case of the top-quark we first review constraints from top-quark pair production and decay, and then compare them to what can be achieved by studying $t\bar{t}h$ production. We also constrain the corresponding couplings for $b$-quarks and light quarks by studying $pp \to b\bar{b}h$ and $pp \to hX$ respectively.