2017/12/31 by Brian Batell, A. Freitas, Ayres Freitas +2 · 1 citation
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Electroweak interaction #Electroweak scale #Fermion #Higgs boson #Mathematics #Particle Detector Development and Performance #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Phenomenology (philosophy) #Physics #Physics beyond the Standard Model #Scalar (mathematics) #Theoretical physics #Yukawa potential #hep-ex #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.98.055026
published as Phys. Rev. D 98, 055026 (2018) · 37 pages, 7 figures. v2: references added, minor changes, conclusions unchanged; matches version published in PRD
openalex publication_date 2018/09/20 · arxiv created 2018/10/18 · arxiv updated 2018/10/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
New singlet scalar bosons have broad phenomenological utility and feature prominently in many extensions of the standard model. Such scalars are often taken to have Higgs-like couplings to SM fermions in order to evade stringent flavor bounds, e.g., by assuming minimal flavor violation (MFV), which leads to a rather characteristic phenomenology. Here, we describe an alternative approach, based on an effective field theory framework, for a new scalar that dominantly couples to one specific SM fermion mass eigenstate. A simple flavor hypothesis ensures adequate suppression of new flavor changing neutral currents. We consider radiatively generated flavor changing neutral currents and scalar potential terms in such theories, demonstrating that they are often suppressed by small Yukawa couplings, and also describe the role of CP symmetry. We further demonstrate that such scalars can have masses that are significantly below the electroweak scale while still being natural, provided they are sufficiently weakly coupled to ordinary matter. In comparison to other flavor scenarios, our framework is rather versatile since a single (or a few) desired scalar couplings may be investigated in isolation. We illustrate this by discussing in detail the examples of an up-specific scalar mediator to dark matter and a muon-specific scalar that may address the \ensuremath∼3\ensuremathσ muon anomalous magnetic moment discrepancy.