2014/09/30 by D. Aristizábal Sierra, D. Aristizabal Sierra, Avelino Vicente +1
Physics and Astronomy · #Boson #Branching fraction #Electron #Electroweak interaction #Higgs boson #Lepton #Missing energy #Neutrino Physics Research #Nuclear physics #Particle Detector Development and Performance #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #Physics beyond the Standard Model #Quantum mechanics #Scalar (mathematics) #Sigma #Signal strength #Standard Model (mathematical formulation) #Type (biology) #hep-ex #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.90.115004
published as Phys. Rev. D 90, 115004 (2014) · 8 pages, 2 figures; v2: references added
openalex publication_date 2014/12/03 · arxiv created 2014/12/12 · arxiv updated 2014/12/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Direct searches for lepton flavor-violating Higgs boson decays in the \ensuremathτ\ensuremathμ channel have recently been reported by the CMS Collaboration. The results display a slight excess of signal events with a significance of 2.5\ensuremathσ, which translates into a branching ratio of about 1%. By interpreting these findings as a hint for beyond the standard model physics, we show that the Type-III 2HDM is capable of reproducing such a signal while at the same time satisfying from below boundedness of the scalar potential, perturbativity, electroweak precision data, measured Higgs standard decay modes, and low-energy lepton flavor-violating constraints. We have found that the allowed signal strength ranges for the bb, WW*, and ZZ* standard channels shrink as soon as BR(h\ensuremath→\ensuremathτ\ensuremathμ)\ensuremath∼1% is enforced. Thus, we point out that if the excess persists, improved measurements of these channels may be used to test our Type-III 2HDM scenario.