Probing the Top-Yukawa Coupling in Associated Higgs production with a Single Top Quark

Associated production of the Higgs boson with a single top quark proceeds through Feynman diagrams, which are either proportional to the hWW, top-Yukawa, or the bottom-Yukawa couplings. It was shown in literature that the interference between the top-Yukawa and the gauge-Higgs diagrams can be significant, and thus the measurement of the cross sections can help pin down the sign and the size of the top-Yukawa coupling. Here we perform a detailed study with full detector simulations of such a possibility at the LHC-14 within the current allowed range of hWW and top-Yukawa couplings, using h-> b b-bar, \gamma\gamma, \tau+ \tau-, ZZ* -> 4 l modes. We found that the LHC-14 has the potential to distinguish the size and the sign of the top-Yukawa coupling. Among the channels the h-> b b-bar mode mode provides the best chance to probe the signal, followed by the h -> \gamma\gamma\ mode, which has the advantage of a narrow reconstructed mass peak. We also pointed out that the spatial separation among the final-state particles has the potential in differentiating among various values of the top-Yukawa coupling.Comment: 28 pages, 13 figures; a comment about NLO correction is added, references added; match the published versio

An Exploratory study of Higgs-boson pair production

Higgs-boson pair production is well known being capable to probe the trilinear self-coupling of the Higgs boson, which is one of the important ingredients of the Higgs sector itself. Pair production then depends on the top-quark Yukawa coupling $g_t^{S,P}$, Higgs trilinear coupling $\lambda_{3H}$, and a possible dim-5 contact-type $ttHH$ coupling $g_{tt}^{S,P}$, which may appear in some higher representations of the Higgs sector. We take into account the possibility that the top-Yukawa and the $ttHH$ couplings involved can be CP violating. We calculate the cross sections and the interference terms as coefficients of the square or the 4th power of each coupling $(g_t^{S,P}, \lambda_{3H}, g_{tt}^{S,P})$ at various stages of cuts, such that the desired cross section under various cuts can be obtained by simply inputing the couplings. We employ the $H H \to \gamma\gamma b \bar b$ decay mode of the Higgs-boson pair to investigate the possibility of disentangle the triangle diagram from the box digram so as to have a clean probe of the trilinear coupling at the LHC. We found that the angular separation between the $b$ and $\bar b$ and that between the two photons is useful. We obtain the sensitivity reach of each pair of couplings at the 14 TeV LHC and the future 100 TeV pp machine. Finally, we also comment on using the $b\bar b \tau^+ \tau^-$ decay mode in Appendix.Comment: v3: 50 pages, 24 figures: 1 new CPV scenario and 3 new figures are added; v4: published version, title changed in the journal versio

Entangling Higgs production associated with a single top and a top-quark pair in the presence of anomalous top-Yukawa coupling

The ATLAS and CMS collaborations observed a mild excess in the associated Higgs production with a top-quark pair ($t\bar t h$) and reported the signal strengths of $\mu_{tth}^{\rm ATLAS}=1.81\pm 0.80$ and $\mu_{tth}^{\rm CMS}=2.75\pm 0.99$ based on the data collected at $\sqrt{s}$= 7 and 8 TeV. Although, at the current stage, there is no obvious indication whether the excess is real or due to statistical fluctuations, here we perform a case study of this mild excess by exploiting the strong entanglement between the associated Higgs production with a single top quark ($thX$) and $t\bar t h$ production in the presence of anomalous top-Yukawa coupling. As well known, $t\bar t h$ production only depends on the absolute value of the top-Yukawa coupling. Meanwhile, in $thX$ production, this degeneracy is lifted through the strong interference between the two main contributions which are proportional to the top-Yukawa and the gauge-Higgs couplings, respectively. Especially, when the relative sign of the top-Yukawa coupling with respect to the gauge-Higgs coupling is reversed, the $thX$ cross section can be enhanced by more than one order of magnitude. We perform a detailed study of the influence of $thX$ production on $t\bar{t}h$ production in the presence of the anomalous top-Yukawa coupling and point out that it is crucial to include $thX$ production in the analysis of the $t\bar t h$ data to pin down the sign and the size of the top-Yukawa coupling in future. While assuming the Standard Model (SM) value for the gauge-Higgs coupling, we vary the top-Yukawa coupling within the range allowed by the current LHC Higgs data. We consider the Higgs decay modes into multileptons, $b\bar b$ and $\gamma\gamma$ putting a particular emphasis on the same sign dilepton events. We also discuss ...Comment: 32 pages, 10 figures, 12 tables, to appear in JHE

Measuring properties of a Heavy Higgs boson in the H→ZZ→4ℓH\to ZZ \to 4\ell decay

In many extensions of the standard model, there exist a few extra Higgs bosons. Suppose a heavy neutral Higgs boson H is discovered at the LHC, one could then investigate CP and CPT~ properties of its couplings to a pair of $Z$ bosons through $H \to ZZ \to 4\ell$. We use the helicity-amplitude method to write down the most general form for the angular distributions of the four final-state leptons, which can cover the case of CP-even, -odd, and -mixed state for the Higgs boson. We figure out there are 9 types of angular observables and all the $H$ couplings to $Z$ bosons can be fully determined by exploiting them. A Higgs-boson mass of 260 GeV below the $t\bar t$ threshold is illustrated with full details. With a total of $10^3$ events of $H \to ZZ \to 4\ell$, one can determine the couplings up to 12-20\% uncertainties.Comment: 23 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, to appear in JHE

Higgs-boson-pair production H(→bb‾)H(→γγ)H(\rightarrow b\overline{b})H(\rightarrow\gamma\gamma) from gluon fusion at the HL-LHC and HL-100 TeV hadron collider

We perform the most up-to-date comprehensive signal-background analysis for Higgs-pair production in $HH \to b\bar b \gamma\gamma$ channel at the HL-LHC and HL-100 TeV hadron collider, with the goal of probing the self-coupling $\lambda_{3H}$ of the Higgs boson. We simulate all the standard-model signal and background processes with the simulation tools almost as sophisticated as what experimentalists are using. We find that even for the most promising channel $HH \to b\bar{b}\gamma\gamma$ at the HL-LHC with a luminosity of 3000 fb$^{-1}$, the significance is still not high enough to establish the Higgs self-coupling at the standard model (SM) value. Instead, we can only constrain the self-coupling to $-1.0 < \lambda_{3H} < 7.6$ at $95\%$ confidence level after considering the uncertainties associated with the top-Yukawa coupling and the estimation of backgrounds. Here we also extend the study to the HL-100 TeV hadron collider. With a luminosity of 3 ab$^{-1}$, we find there exists a bulk region of 2.6 \lsim \lambda_{3H} \lsim 4.8 in which one cannot pin down the trilinear coupling. Otherwise one can measure the coupling with a high precision. At the SM value, for example, we show that the coupling can be measured with about 20 \% accuracy. While assuming 30 ab$^{-1}$, the bulk region reduces to 3.1 \lsim \lambda_{3H} \lsim 4.3 and the trilinear coupling can be measured with about 7 \% accuracy at the SM value. With all the simulated background events and results, our study can be useful to probe the Higgs potential of various models with extended Higgs sector, such as two-Higgs-doublet model, MSSM, etc.Comment: 35 pages, 21 figures, 15 tables; New section V. FURTHER IMPROVEMENTS ENVISAGED added, Tables VI and XII updated, references added; New Appendix C adde

Point Mutation of Hoxd12 in Mice

Purpose: Genes of the HoxD cluster play a major role in vertebrate limb development, and changes that modify the Hoxd12 locus affect other genes also, suggesting that HoxD function is coordinated by a control mechanism involving multiple genes during limb morphogenesis. In this study, mutant phenotypes were produced by treatment of mice with chemical mutagen, N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea (ENU). We analyzed mutant mice exhibiting the specific microdactyly phenotype and examined the genes affected. Materials and Methods: We focused on phenotype characteristics including size, bone formation, and digit morphology of ENU-induced microdactyly mice. The expressions of several molecules were analyzed by genome-wide screening and quantitative real-time PCR to define the affected genes. Results: We report on limb phenotypes of an ENU-induced A-to-C mutation in the Hoxd12 gene, resulting in alanine-to-serine conversion. Microdactyly mice exhibited growth defects in the zeugopod and autopod, shortening of digits, a missing tip of digit I, limb growth affected, and dramatic increases in the expressions of Fgf4 and Lmx1b. However, the expression level of Shh was not changed Hoxd12 point mutated mice. Conclusion: These results suggest that point mutation rather than the entire deletion of Hoxd12, such as in knockout and transgenic mice, causes the abnormal limb phenotype in microdactyly mice. The precise nature of the spectrum of differences requires further investigation.link_to_subscribed_fulltex