Flavor and CP violation in Higgs decays

TL;DR

This paper explores CP violation in flavor-violating Higgs decays, showing that significant asymmetries could be detectable at the LHC, especially in certain extended Higgs sector models, if these rare decays are observed.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed calculation of CP asymmetries in flavor-violating Higgs decays within an effective field theory and a general 2HDM, highlighting potential observability at the LHC.

Findings

Large CP asymmetries (~10%) are possible in 2HDM with similar Higgs masses.

Detection prospects are optimal with small Higgs mixing angles.

Observation requires measurement of rare decay modes like h -> tau mu or h -> tau e.

Abstract

Flavor violating interactions of the Higgs boson are a generic feature of models with extended electroweak symmetry breaking sectors. Here, we investigate CP violation in these interactions, which can arise from interference of tree-level and 1-loop diagrams. We compute the CP asymmetry in flavor violating Higgs decays in an effective field theory with only one Higgs boson and in a general Type-III Two Higgs Doublet Model (2HDM). We find that large (~ O(10%)) asymmetries are possible in the 2HDM if one of the extra Higgs bosons has a mass similar to the Standard Model Higgs. For the poorly constrained decay modes h -> tau mu and h -> tau e, this implies that large lepton charge asymmetries could be detectable at the LHC. We quantify this by comparing the sensitivity of the LHC to existing direct and indirect constraints. Interestingly, detection prospects are best if Higgs mixing is relatively small - a situation that is preferred by the current data. Nevertheless, CP violation in h -> tau mu or h -> tau e will only be observable if nonzero rates for these decay modes are measured very soon.