The Dimension Six Triple Gluon Operator in Higgs+Jet Observables

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the triple gluon operator affects Higgs+jet production at the LHC, highlighting its importance in distinguishing new physics effects in Higgs observables.

Contribution

It introduces the analysis of the triple gluon operator's impact on Higgs+jet kinematic distributions, emphasizing its significance alongside other dimension six operators.

Findings

Distortions in Higgs+jet distributions can distinguish $O_{3g}$ from other operators.

Transverse momentum and rapidity differences are effective discriminators.

Size of distortions from $O_{3g}$ are comparable to other operators with similar Wilson coefficients.

Abstract

Recently a lot of progress has been made towards a full classification of new physics effects in Higgs observables by means of effective dimension six operators. Specifically, Higgs production in association with a high transverse momentum jet has been suggested as a way to discriminate between operators that modify the Higgs-top coupling and operators that induce an effective Higgs-gluon coupling---a distinction that is hard to achieve with signal strength measurements alone. With this article we would like to draw attention to another source of new physics in Higgs+jet observables: the triple gluon operator $O_{3g}$ (consisting of three factors of the gluon field strength tensor). We compute the distortions of kinematic distributions in Higgs+jet production at a 14 TeV LHC due to $O_{3g}$ and compare them with the distortions due to dimension six operators involving the Higgs doublet. We find that the transverse momentum, the jet rapidity and the difference between the Higgs and jet rapidity are well suited to distinguish between the contributions from $O_{3g}$ and those from other operators, and that the size of the distortions are similar if the Wilson coefficients are of the same order as the expected bounds from other observables. We conclude that a full analysis of new physics in Higgs+jet observables must take the contributions from $O_{3g}$ into account.