SMEFT is falsifiable through multi-Higgs measurements (even in the absence of new light particles)

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that multi-Higgs measurements can test the validity of the SMEFT framework by revealing correlations among effective field theory coefficients, even without new light particles.

Contribution

It derives testable correlations among HEFT coefficients from SMEFT principles, providing a way to falsify SMEFT with future experimental data.

Findings

Correlations among HEFT coefficients are predicted by SMEFT.

Violations of these correlations would falsify SMEFT.

Multi-Higgs measurements are crucial for testing SMEFT validity.

Abstract

From the embedding of the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT) in the more general Higgs Effective Field Theory (HEFT), we expose correlations among the coefficients of the latter that, if found to be violated in future data, would lead to the experimental falsification of the SMEFT framework. These are derived from the necessary symmetric point of HEFT and analyticity of the SMEFT Lagrangian that allows the construction of the SMEFT expansion, as laid out by other groups, and properties at that point of the Higgs-flare function $\mathcal{F}(h)$ coupling Goldstone and Higgs bosons, of the Higgs potential $V(h)$ and of the Higgs-top quark coupling function $\mathcal{G}(h)$.