Rare few-body decays of the Standard Model Higgs boson

Abstract

We present a survey of rare and exclusive few-body decays of the standard model (SM) Higgs boson, defined as those into two to four final particles with branching fractions $\mathcal{B}\lesssim 10^{-5}$. Studies of such decays can be exploited to constrain Yukawa couplings of quarks and leptons, probe flavour-changing Higgs decays, estimate backgrounds for exotic Higgs decays into beyond-SM particles, and/or confirm quantum chromodynamics factorization with small nonperturbative corrections. We collect the theoretical $\mathcal{B}$ values for about 70 unobserved Higgs rare decay channels, indicating their current experimental limits, and estimating their expected bounds in p-p collisions at the HL-LHC. Among those, we include 20 new decay channels computed for the first time for ultrarare Higgs boson decays into photons and/or neutrinos, radiative quark-flavour-changing exclusive decays, and radiative decays into leptonium states. This survey can help guide and prioritize upcoming experimental and theoretical studies of unobserved Higgs boson decays.

Comments: 27 pages, 12 figures. LHCHWG-2025-006 contribution to the "Yellow Report 5 of the LHC Higgs Working Group". Minor corrections