Search for flavor-changing neutral currents in top quark decays $t\to Hc$ and $t \to Hu$ in multilepton final states in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}= 13$ TeV with the ATLAS detector

TL;DR

This paper searches for rare top quark decays involving flavor-changing neutral currents to Higgs bosons in multilepton final states, setting new upper limits on their branching fractions using 13 TeV proton-proton collision data.

Contribution

It provides the first stringent experimental limits on top quark decays to Higgs and up/charm quarks in multilepton channels at 13 TeV.

Findings

No signal observed for $t o Hc$ or $t o Hu$ decays.

Upper limits on branching fractions are set at 0.16% and 0.19%.

Results constrain new physics models predicting flavor-changing neutral currents.

Abstract

Flavor-changing neutral currents are not present in the Standard Model at tree level and are suppressed in loop processes by the unitarity of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix; the corresponding rates for top quark decay processes are experimentally unobservable. Extensions of the Standard Model can generate new flavor-changing neutral current processes, leading to signals which, if observed, would be unambiguous evidence of new interactions. A dataset corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 36.1 fb$^{-1}$ of $pp$ collisions at a center-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s}=$ 13 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider is used to search for top quarks decaying to up or charm quarks with the emission of a Higgs boson, with subsequent Higgs boson decay to final states with at least one electron or muon. No signal is observed and limits on the branching fractions $\mathcal{B}(t \to Hc) <$ 0.16% and $\mathcal{B}(t \to H u) <$ 0.19% at 95% confidence level are obtained (with expected limits of 0.15% in both cases).