Search for Flavor Changing Neutral Currents in $t\to Hc,H\to \tau \tau$ Decay at the LHC

Abstract

The prospects of searching for the flavor changing neutral current effect in the decay of $t\to Hc,H\to \tau \tau$ are investigated with the simulated $p-p$ collision data for the ATLAS detector at the LHC, where the Higgs mass is assumed to be 125~GeV. A fit based on the constraints from the Higgs mass and the tau decay kinematics is performed for each event, which improves significantly the Higgs and top mass reconstruction and helps the signal-background separation. Boosted Decision Trees discriminants are developed to achieve an optimal sensitivity of searching for the FCNC signal. An expected upper limit of the branching ratio $\mathcal{B}(t\to Hc)$ at $95\%$ confidence level of 0.25\% is obtained with a data set of 100~fb${}^{-1}$ at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV during the LHC Run-2 period.

Comments: revised, references added, accepted for publication in Physical Review D