The Quark Flavor Violating Higgs Decay $h \rightarrow \bar b s + b \bar s$ in the MSSM

TL;DR

This paper investigates the potential for observing the flavor-violating decay of the Higgs boson into bottom and strange quarks within the MSSM, considering experimental constraints and different model assumptions.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the Higgs decay $h ightarrow ar b s + b ar s$ in the MSSM, including model-independent and minimal flavor violation scenarios, with implications for future collider observations.

Findings

Branching ratios up to 10^{-4} are possible in a model-independent analysis.

Electroweak precision observables can impose stronger constraints than B-physics observables.

Observation of the decay at future colliders is not excluded.

Abstract

We study the quark flavor violating Higgs-boson decay $h \rightarrow \bar b s + b \bar s$ in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM). The decay is analyzed first in a model independent, and in a second step in the minimal flavor violationg (MFV) Constrained MSSM. The experimental constraints from $B$-Physics observables (BPO) and electroweak precision observables (EWPO) are also calculated and imposed on the parameter space. It is shown that in some cases the EWPO restrict the flavor violating parameter space stronger than the BPO. In the model independent analysis values of ${\cal O}(10^{-4})$ can be found for ${\rm BR}(h \rightarrow \bar b s + b \bar s)$. In the MFV CMSSM such results can only be obtained in very restricted parts of the parameter space. The results show that it is not excluded to observe the decay $h \rightarrow \bar b s + b \bar s$ in the MSSM at future $e^+e^-$ colliders.