Light quark Yukawas in triboson final states

TL;DR

This paper explores how measurements of triple vector boson production at colliders can be used to probe the light quark Yukawa couplings, providing a new method to constrain these fundamental parameters.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach using triboson production to improve sensitivity to first-generation light quark Yukawas at colliders.

Findings

HL-LHC can reach ~400 sensitivity to down Yukawa

Sensitivity can be improved to ~30 at FCC-hh

Probes dimension-6 SMEFT operators at TeV scale

Abstract

Triple heavy vector boson production, $p p \to VVV$ $(V = W, Z)$, has recently been observed for the first time. We propose that precision measurements of this process provide an excellent probe of the first generation light quark Yukawa couplings. Modified quark interactions with the off-shell Higgs in this process lead to a rapid growth of the partonic cross sections with energy, which manifests in an enhanced $p_T$ distribution of the final state leptons and quarks. We quantify this effect and estimate the present and future 2$\sigma$ sensitivity to the up, down, and strange Yukawas. In particular, we find that HL-LHC can reach $\mathcal{O}(400)$ sensitivity to the down Yukawa relative to the Standard Model value, improving the current sensitivity in this process by a factor of $10$, and which can be further improved to $\mathcal{O}(30)$ at FCC-hh. This is competitive with and complementary to constraints from global fits and other on-shell probes of the first generation Yukawas. The triboson sensitivity at HL-LHC corresponds to probing dimension-6 SMEFT operators suppressed by an $\mathcal{O}(1)$ TeV scale, similarly to other LHC Higgs probes.