Constraining the Higgs couplings to up and down quarks using production kinematics at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

TL;DR

This paper explores how Higgs production kinematic distributions at the LHC can be used to constrain the Higgs couplings to up and down quarks, achieving competitive precision with existing methods.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the Higgs transverse momentum distribution can effectively constrain light quark Yukawa couplings using LHC data, with potential for further improvement.

Findings

Constraints on up quark coupling: -0.73 to 0.33

Constraints on down quark coupling: -0.88 to 0.32

Potential for improved sensitivity with additional decay channels

Abstract

We study the prospects for constraining the Higgs boson's couplings to up and down quarks using kinematic distributions in Higgs production at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. We find that the Higgs $p_T$ distribution can be used to constrain these couplings with precision competitive to other proposed techniques. With 3000 fb$^{-1}$ of data at 13 TeV in the four-lepton decay channel, we find $-0.73 \lesssim \bar{\kappa}_u \lesssim 0.33$ and $-0.88 \lesssim \bar{\kappa}_d \lesssim 0.32$, where $\bar{\kappa}_q = (m_q/m_b) \kappa_q$ is a scaling factor that modifies the $q$ quark Yukawa coupling relative to the Standard Model bottom quark Yukawa coupling. The sensitivity may be improved by including additional Higgs decay channels.