On detecting Higgs coupling in transitions of light atoms

TL;DR

This paper explores methods to detect Higgs couplings in light atoms and ions, comparing light and heavy systems, and discusses the experimental and theoretical challenges involved in setting constraints on Higgs interactions through atomic transitions.

Contribution

It revisits the potential of using light atomic systems, especially muonic and electronic ions, to set limits on Higgs couplings, highlighting the advantages and challenges of each approach.

Findings

Light muonic ions require sub-0.1 ppm precision for constraints.

Theoretical uncertainties in muonic systems are significant due to nuclear effects.

Electronic transitions in light atoms offer a promising alternative for Higgs coupling detection.

Abstract

In light of the known Higgs mass and the current constraints on the quark-lepton Higgs coupling, we derive conditions for extracting upper limits on the lepton-nucleon Higgs coupling from light atoms and ions, assuming the availability of locally precise two- and three-body methods might be beneficial. A recent work has proposed to extract these limits in heavy atoms where the Higgs term is enhanced by $\approx 10^3 AZ$, due to both the large coupling modifier and large $A$, $Z$, and assuming sufficiently precise relativistic electron wave functions. We first revisit the old idea of using the Lamb shift in light muonic ions where the coupling is enhanced by about $201^3 AZ^3$ primarily due to the concentration of the muon wave function at the origin, the muon coupling modifier already being close to 1. For the muonic helium an experimental precision below 0.1 ppm is required to reach the constraints on Higgs couplings. However, theoretical uncertainty is large due to nuclear potential dependence of the finite size terms enhanced by the small muon orbit, and their elimination by using several states is precluded due to the Lamb shift being the only precisely measurable state. In normal (electronic) light systems transitions between low-lying states lie near the optical region allowing precise experiments, and extraction may be possible by eliminating the finite-size, polarization and Zemach moment terms from a set of transitions, e.g. $1S-2S$ and improved $2^3S-2^3P$ and $2^1S-2^3S$ in ${\rm He}^+$, while isotope shifts could be used if additional transitions are measured as precisely.