On-shell Higgsing for EFTs

TL;DR

This paper develops a method to derive massive contact terms and amplitudes in effective field theories by covariantizing massless amplitudes using on-shell techniques, applicable to particles of various spins.

Contribution

It introduces a covariantization procedure for deriving massive contact terms from massless amplitudes in EFTs, extending on-shell methods to include particles of different spins.

Findings

Derived massive contact terms from massless amplitudes.

Applied method to standard-model EFT for scalars, fermions, vectors.

Connected helicity-flipped components to residues of massless amplitudes.

Abstract

We study the on-shell version of the Higgs mechanism in effective theories (EFTs) containing particles of different spins, focusing on contact terms as a simple starting point. We derive the massive contact terms and their coefficients from the massless amplitudes of the EFT above the symmetry breaking scale, by covariantizing the massless contact terms under the massive little group. In the little-group-covariant massive-spinor formalism, this notationally amounts to bolding spinor labels. Mass-suppressed contributions to the contact-term coefficients arise from higher-point contact terms with additional soft Higgs legs. We apply this procedure to obtain massive four-point amplitudes featuring scalars, spin 1/2 fermions and vectors, in the standard-model EFT. The subleading helicity-flipped components of each massive contact term, which are dictated by little-group covariance, are associated with the residues of factorizable massless amplitudes. Extra "frozen" Higgses emitted from each leg of a massless contact term supply the additional light-like momentum component, needed to form a massive leg of the same polarization. As another application, we derive various components of massive three-point amplitudes from massless amplitudes with up to three additional Higgses, in a standard-model-like toy model.