Probing the nature of the Higgs-gluon coupling

TL;DR

Problem: The SM Higgs–gluon coupling is loop-induced and may be modified by new physics. Approach: Use an effective field theory with dimension-7 operators to couple a scalar or pseudo-scalar Higgs to gluons and analyze H+1-jet and H+2-jet observables at LO, including operator interference and higher-order suppressed terms. Findings: Dimension-7 operators can noticeably distort the Higgs p_T spectrum and two-jet angular observables, with strong channel-dependent effects and notable contributions from higher-order operator products; CP-even and CP-odd cases display related but distinct patterns. Significance: The framework provides a practical method to probe non-SM Higgs–gluon structure at the LHC and highlights the need for NLO QCD studies to robustly extract potential deviations.

Abstract

One and two-jet observables of dimension-7 Higgs-gluon coupling operators are studied as probes of possible deviations from the top-loop induced gluon-Higgs coupling. We discuss the case of both a scalar as well as a pseudo-scalar Higgs boson and show that higher order operators can give visible deviations from Standard Model distribution shapes.

Figures (15)

• Figure 1: Normalized Higgs transverse momentum distributions for scalar coupling operators. The normalization factors $\sigma_{ij}$ are given in tab:sigmaijpt.
• Figure 2: Same as fig:ptdist-LO-suppression, but for pseudo-scalar coupling operators. Note that the $gg$ channel is identical to the scalar case. The $\sigma_{ij}$ are given in tab:sigmaijpttilde.
• Figure 3: Higgs transverse momentum distributions with .9 SM matching coefficients, resulting in a total $m_t^2$-suppression with respect to $C_1^2$. Please note that in case of the $gq$ and summed channel the crossterm $\mathcal{O}_1\mathcal{O}_5$ has been multiplied with $-1$. For the $qq$ channel the crossterm $\mathcal{O}_1\mathcal{O}_2$ has been multiplied with $-1$.
• Figure 4: Normalized distributions for azimuthal angle difference of the two final state jets for scalar operators. The $\sigma_{ij}$ are given in tab:phiij.
• Figure 5: Same as fig:phidist-LO-suppression, but for pseudo-scalar operators. The $\sigma_{ij}$ are given in tab:phiijtilde.