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High Energy Physics - Phenomenology, hep-ph
Abstract:
Flavor violating interactions of the Higgs boson are a generic feature of
models with extended electroweak symmetry breaking sectors. Here, we
investigate CP violation in these interactions, which can arise from
interference of tree-level and 1-loop diagrams. We compute the CP asymmetry in
flavor violating Higgs decays in an effective field theory with only one Higgs
boson and in a general Type-III Two Higgs Doublet Model (2HDM). We find that
large (~ O(10%)) asymmetries are possible in the 2HDM if one of the extra Higgs
bosons has a mass similar to the Standard Model Higgs. For the poorly
constrained decay modes h -> tau mu and h -> tau e, this implies that large
lepton charge asymmetries could be detectable at the LHC. We quantify this by
comparing the sensitivity of the LHC to existing direct and indirect
constraints. Interestingly, detection prospects are best if Higgs mixing is
relatively small - a situation that is preferred by the current data.
Nevertheless, CP violation in h -> tau mu or h -> tau e will only be observable
if nonzero rates for these decay modes are measured very soon.
