Signatures of a nonstandard Higgs from flavor physics

TL;DR

This paper explores how flavor physics experiments can provide insights into the nature of the Higgs boson by analyzing effective field theory constraints and correlations in semileptonic decays, independent of direct Higgs detection.

Contribution

It demonstrates that flavor physics can reveal signatures of a nonstandard Higgs through correlations in Wilson coefficients, offering a novel approach to understanding electroweak symmetry breaking.

Findings

Flavor experiments can distinguish Higgs scenarios without direct Higgs detection.

Correlations between Wilson coefficients depend on the electroweak symmetry breaking dynamics.

Model-independent analyses of semileptonic decays are simplified by these correlations.

Abstract

We examine the constraints coming from incorporating the full Standard Model gauge symmetry into the effective field theory description of flavor processes, using semileptonic decays as paradigmatic examples. Depending on the dynamics triggering electroweak symmetry breaking, different patterns of correlations between the Wilson coefficients arise. Interestingly, this implies that flavor experiments are capable of shedding light upon the nature of the Higgs boson without actually requiring Higgs final states. Furthermore, the observed correlations can simplify model-independent analyses of these decays.