Beyond Higgs Couplings: Probing the Higgs with Angular Observables at Future $e^+ e^-$ Colliders

TL;DR

This paper investigates how angular observables in the Higgs-strahlung process at future electron-positron colliders can improve constraints on new physics, complementing rate measurements and probing BSM effects.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of angular asymmetries in $e^+e^- o ZH$ at future colliders, highlighting their potential to constrain Higgs EFT operators and BSM couplings.

Findings

Angular asymmetries enhance sensitivity to Higgs EFT operators.

Angular observables can probe $H Z \gamma$ couplings.

They help constrain supersymmetric scalar top partner effects.

Abstract

We study angular observables in the $e^+e^-\to Z H\to \ell^+ \ell^-\,b\bar{b}$ channel at future circular $e^+ e^-$ colliders such as CEPC and FCC-ee. Taking into account the impact of realistic cut acceptance and detector effects, we forecast the precision of six angular asymmetries at CEPC (FCC-ee) with center-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s} =$ 240 GeV and 5 (30) ${\rm ab}^{-1}$ integrated luminosity. We then determine the projected sensitivity to a range of operators relevant for the Higgs-strahlung process in the dimension-6 Higgs EFT. Our results show that angular observables provide complementary sensitivity to rate measurements when constraining various tensor structures arising from new physics. We further find that angular asymmetries provide a novel means of both probing BSM corrections to the $H Z \gamma$ coupling and constraining the "blind spot" in indirect limits on supersymmetric scalar top partners.