Searches for top-Higgs FCNC couplings via the Whj signal with $h\to \gamma \gamma$ at the LHC

Abstract

In this paper, we investigated the process $pp\to W^{-}hj$ induced by the top-Higgs flavor changing neutral current (FCNC) couplings at the LHC. We found that the cross section of $pp\to W^{-}hj$ mainly comes from the resonant process $pp\to W^{-}t\to W^{-}hq$ due to the anomalous $tqH$ couplings (where $q$ denotes up and charm quarks). We further studied the observability of the top-Higgs FCNC couplings through the process $pp\to W^{-}(\to {\ell }^{-}{\bar{\nu }}_{\ell })h(\to \gamma \gamma )j$ and found that the branching ratios $Br(t\to qh)$ can be probed to $0.16\%$ at $3\sigma$ level at 14 TeV LHC with an integrated luminosity of 3000 fb${}^{-1}$.

Comments: 14 figures and 2 tables, matches published version