Higgs form factors in Associated Production

TL;DR

This paper develops a formalism to analyze anomalous Higgs interactions with vector bosons and fermions, emphasizing the importance of invariant-mass distributions in associated production at the LHC for model-independent insights.

Contribution

It introduces a form factor approach to characterize Higgs interactions, linking effective field theories with experimental observables in a novel way.

Findings

Invariant-mass distributions are crucial for model-independent Higgs interaction measurements.

Differential spectra in Higgs decays and associated production can indicate nonlinear gauge symmetry realization.

The formalism connects linear and nonlinear effective theories to experimental form factors.

Abstract

We further develop a form factor formalism characterizing anomalous interactions of the Higgs-like boson (h) to massive electroweak vector bosons (V) and generic bilinear fermion states (F). Employing this approach, we examine the sensitivity of pp -> F ->Vh associated production to physics beyond the Standard Model, and compare it to the corresponding sensitivity of h -> V F decays. We discuss how determining the Vh invariant-mass distribution in associated production at LHC is a key ingredient for model-independent determinations of h V F interactions. We also provide a general discussion about the power counting of the form factor's momentum dependence in a generic effective field theory approach, analyzing in particular how effective theories based on a linear and non-linear realization of the SU(2)_L x U(1)_Y gauge symmetry map into the form factor formalism. We point out how measurements of the differential spectra characterizing h -> V F decays and pp -> F -> Vh associated production could be the leading indication of the presence of a nonlinear realization of the SU(2)_L x U(1)_Y gauge symmetry.