We present the complete set of positivity bounds on the Higgs effective field theory (HEFT) at next-to-leading order (NLO). We identify the 15 operators that can be constrained by positivity, as they contribute to $s^2$-growth in the amplitude for longitudinal gauge-Higgs scattering, that is to all possible 2-to-2 scattering processes involving longitudinal gauge bosons, $V_L=W_L^{\pm },Z_L$, and the Higgs boson, $h$. We find two sets of constraints: (i) specific linear combinations of $CP$-even Wilson coefficients (WCs) must be positive, and (ii) the magnitudes of some WCs—including all $CP$-odd ones—must be smaller than products of other $CP$-even WCs. We present our final constraints on the 15 dimensional HEFT space and show how known positivity bounds on the 3 dimensional space of dimension 8 SMEFT can be recovered from them. We find that only about 5% of the parameter space for WCs of HEFT operators at NLO complies with these positivity constraints. Additionally, we obtain double-sided bounds on these WCs by fully exploiting the implications of unitarity and $st$-crossing symmetry. For WCs contributing to the vector boson scattering process our final constraints are in most cases significantly stronger than the experimental ones. For the $V_L{V}_L,hh\to hh$ and $V_L{V}_L,hh\to V_{L}h$ process, there are no reported experimental limits and our theoretical constraints provide the first bounds.

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• Effective field theory
• Electroweak interaction
• Extensions of gauge sector
• W & Z bosons