Flavoring the production of Higgs pairs

Abstract

We present a study on the possibility of observing a hypothetical particle known as the Flavon $H_F$, which is predicted in an extension of the standard model that includes the so-called Froggatt-Nielsen mechanism. The proposed decay channel is through a $b\bar{b}h$ final state, where the Higgs boson $(h)$ decays to a pair of photons or a pair of $b$ quarks $(h\to \gamma \gamma ,b\bar{b})$. We found that, under special scenarios of the model parameter space, the processes analyzed could provide evidence for the existence of the Flavon in the next stage of the LHC: the High Luminosity LHC. Specifically, we predict a \textit{signal significance} of $5\sigma$ ($2\sigma$) in the $h\to b\bar{b}$ ($h\to \gamma \gamma$) channel for a Flavon mass of $800$ ($900$) GeV and an integrated luminosity of $2500$ ($3000$) fb${}^{-1}$.

Comments: Version accepted for publication in PRD journal