Exploring the Anomalous Higgs-top Couplings

Abstract

Top quark with its large Yukawa coupling is crucially important to explore TeV scale physics. Therefore, the study of Higgs-top sector is highly motivated to look for any deviations from the standard model predictions. The most general lowest order Lagrangian for the Higgs-top Yukawa coupling has scalar ($\kappa$) and pseudoscalar ($\tilde{\kappa }$) components. Currently, these couplings are constrained indirectly using the present experimental limits on the Higgs-$\gamma$-$\gamma$ and Higgs-gluon-gluon couplings. Furthermore, stronger bounds on $\kappa$ and $\tilde{\kappa }$ are obtained using the limits on the electric dipole moments (EDM). In this work, we propose an asymmetry-like observable $O_{\varphi }$ in $t\bar{t}H$ production at the LHC to probe the Higgs-top coupling and to distinguish between the scalar and pseudoscalar components. We also show that the presence of the pseudoscalar component in the Higgs-top Yukawa coupling leads to a sizeable value for the top quark EDM. It is shown that a limit of $10^{-19}$ e.cm, which is achievable by the future $e^{-}{e}^{+}$ collider, allows us to exclude a significant region in the $(\kappa ,\tilde{\kappa })$ plane.

Comments: 15 pages, 8 figures