Abstract
The ATLAS Collaboration has recently reported a search for light-charged Higgs in t → H+b decay, with \( {H}^{+}\to c\overline{b} \). An excess with a local significance of approximately 3σ is found at \( {m}_{H^{+}} \) ≈ 130 GeV, with a best-fit value of BR(t → H+b) × BR(\( {H}^{+}\to c\overline{b} \)) = (1.6 ± 0.6) × 10−3. We study the implications of such a hypothetical signal in multi-Higgs doublet models. We take into account constraints from searches for other charged Higgs decays and from flavor-changing neutral current processes. Two Higgs doublet models with flavor structure dictated by natural flavor conservation (NFC), minimal flavor violation (MFV), or the Froggatt-Nielsen (FN) mechanism cannot account for such excess. A three-Higgs doublet model with NFC can account for the signal. The Yukawa couplings of the neutral pseudoscalar A in the down sector, \( {\hat{Y}}_A^D \), should be larger by a factor of 4 – 6 compared to the corresponding Yukawa couplings of the Higgs h, \( {\hat{Y}}_h^D \). We further present two minimal scenarios, one in which a single Yukawa coupling in the down sector, \( {\left({\hat{Y}}_A^D\right)}_{bb} \), gives the only significant contribution, and one in which two Yukawa couplings in the up sector, \( {\left({\hat{Y}}_A^U\right)}_{tt} \) and \( {\left({\hat{Y}}_A^U\right)}_{tc} \), give the only significant contributions, and we discuss possible tests of these scenarios.
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Acknowledgments
YN is the Amos de-Shalit chair of theoretical physics, and is supported by grants from the Israel Science Foundation (grant number 1124/20), the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF), Jerusalem, Israel (grant number 2018257), by the Minerva Foundation (with funding from the Federal Ministry for Education and Research), and by the Yeda-Sela (YeS) Center for Basic Research. NB received funding from the Spanish FEDER / MCIU-AEI under the grant FPA2017-84543-P.
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Bernal, N., Losada, M., Nir, Y. et al. The flavor of a light charged Higgs. J. High Energ. Phys. 2023, 78 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP10(2023)078
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP10(2023)078