Discerning EFTs through multi-Higgs production

TL;DR

This paper investigates multi-Higgs production via vector boson scattering within EFT frameworks, deriving amplitude expressions and showing that HEFT predictions can significantly enhance cross sections compared to SMEFT, impacting LHC phenomenology.

Contribution

It provides compact tree-level amplitude formulas for multi-Higgs production in EFTs and compares HEFT and SMEFT predictions for LHC-relevant scenarios.

Findings

HEFT avoids strong suppression seen in SMEFT.

Derived compact expressions for up to four Higgs boson amplitudes.

Cross sections in HEFT are significantly larger than in SMEFT.

Abstract

In these proceedings we present the main results of [arXiv:2311.04280 [hep-ph]], where we explore the phenomenological implications of multi-Higgs boson production through longitudinal vector boson scattering within the framework of Effective Field Theories (EFTs). We derive compact expressions for effective tree-level amplitudes involving up to four final-state Higgs bosons. Subsequently, we compute total cross sections for scenarios relevant to the LHC, where we observe that the general Higgs Effective Theory (HEFT) prediction avoids the strong suppression found in the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT), typically expected to be several orders of magnitude smaller.