Comparison between $\mu^{-}\mu^{+}$ and $e^{-}e^{+}$ colliders for charged Higgs production in 2HDM

TL;DR

This paper compares the potential of muon and electron colliders for charged Higgs production in 2HDM, highlighting the advantages of muon colliders due to neutral Higgs exchange and analyzing discovery prospects at 3 TeV.

Contribution

It provides a systematic comparison of charged Higgs production at muon and electron colliders, emphasizing the impact of neutral Higgs exchange diagrams at muon colliders.

Findings

Muon colliders show enhanced cross sections due to neutral Higgs exchange.

VBF processes at electron colliders can compete with pair production.

Discovery potential at 3 TeV muon collider is demonstrated.

Abstract

We study the phenomenology of the charged Higgs boson at future muon colliders. We investigate both the pair production $\mu^+ \mu^- \to H^+ H^-$, the single production $\mu^+ \mu^- \to W^\pm H^\mp$, as well as the Vector Boson Fusion (VBF) $\{e^+e^-, \mu^+ \mu^-\} \to \nu \bar{\nu} H^+ H^-$. We show that the neutral Higgs exchange diagrams in the muon collider case can lead to a significant boost in the cross sections through their Yukawa couplings. Our results for the muon collider are systematically compared to the corresponding ones at $e^+e^-$ machines. It is demonstrated that the vector boson fusion (VBF) $e^+e^- \to \nu \bar{\nu} H^+ H^-$ can compete with the mentioned $2\to 2$ processes. We select benchmark points and perform signal-background analyses, taking into account detector simulations. We demonstrate the discovery region at $5\sigma$ and the excluded region at $2\sigma$ levels at a 3 TeV muon collider.