- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine

Physical Review D

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Open Access

Probing CP-violating Higgs-gauge couplings with Higgsstrahlung at e−e+ colliders

Amir Subba*, Subhaditya Bhattacharya†, and Abhik Sarkar‡

  • *Contact author: amirsubba@iitg.ac.in
  • †Contact author: subhab@iitg.ac.in
  • ‡Contact author: sarkar.abhik@iitg.ac.in
PDF

Phys. Rev. D 113, 055018 – Published 6 March, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/973l-lj5c

Abstract

We investigate the sensitivity of a future high-luminosity e−e+ collider operating at s=250  GeV to CP-violating and CP-conserving anomalous hVV interactions via the Higgsstrahlung process. The effects of new physics are parametrized in the Standard Model effective field theory (SMEFT) framework through six dimension-6 operators modifying the hVV vertices. Using polarized beams and exploiting polarization and spin correlation asymmetries reconstructed from Higgs decay products, we perform a comprehensive analysis across the three dominant decay modes, h→bb¯, WW⋆, and ZZ⋆. The h→WW⋆ channel exhibits the highest sensitivity to OHW and OHW˜, while the bb¯ mode constrains the remaining operators with high statistical precision. Sensitivity studies incorporating luminosity scaling and systematic uncertainties show that the projected bounds improve significantly with increasing integrated luminosity, but saturate once experimental systematics exceed the few-percent level. These results highlight the crucial role of spin-based observables and beam polarization in achieving subpercent precision on SMEFT coefficients at future lepton colliders.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

See Also

Optimal estimation of Higgs-gauge boson couplings at the future e+e− colliders

Subhaditya Bhattacharya, Amir Subba, and Abhik Sarkar
Phys. Rev. D 112, 115018 (2025)

Article Text

References (57)

  1. G. Aad et al. (ATLAS Collaboration), Observation of a new particle in the search for the standard model Higgs boson with the ATLAS detector at the LHC, Phys. Lett. B 716, 1 (2012).
  2. S. Chatrchyan et al. (CMS Collaboration), Observation of a new boson at a mass of 125 GeV with the CMS experiment at the LHC, Phys. Lett. B 716, 30 (2012).
  3. S. Chatrchyan et al. (CMS Collaboration), Observation of a new boson with mass near 125 GeV in pp collisions at s=7 and 8 TeV, J. High Energy Phys. 06 (2013) 081.
  4. F. Englert and R. Brout, Broken symmetry and the mass of gauge vector mesons, Phys. Rev. Lett. 13, 321 (1964).
  5. G. S. Guralnik, C. R. Hagen, and T. W. B. Kibble, Global conservation laws and massless particles, Phys. Rev. Lett. 13, 585 (1964).
  6. P. W. Higgs, Broken symmetries and the masses of gauge bosons, Phys. Rev. Lett. 13, 508 (1964).
  7. R. M. Godbole, D. J. Miller, and M. M. Muhlleitner, Aspects of CP violation in the H ZZ coupling at the LHC, J. High Energy Phys. 12 (2007) 031.
  8. R. Godbole, D. J. Miller, K. Mohan, and C. D. White, Boosting Higgs CP properties via VH production at the large hadron collider, Phys. Lett. B 730, 275 (2014).
  9. R. M. Godbole, D. J. Miller, K. A. Mohan, and C. D. White, Jet substructure and probes of CP violation in vh production, J. High Energy Phys. 04(2014) 103.
  10. H.-R. He, X. Wan, and Y.-K. Wang, Anomalous H→ZZ→4ℓ decay and its interference effects on gluon–gluon contribution at the LHC, Chin. Phys. C 44, 123101 (2020).
  11. J. Nakamura, Polarisations of the Z and W bosons in the processes pp→ZH and pp→W±H, J. High Energy Phys. 08 (2017) 008.
  12. S. Banerjee, R. S. Gupta, J. Y. Reiness, and M. Spannowsky, Resolving the tensor structure of the Higgs coupling to Z-bosons via Higgs-strahlung, Phys. Rev. D 100, 115004 (2019).
  13. K. Rao, S. D. Rindani, and P. Sarmah, Study of anomalous gauge-Higgs couplings using Z boson polarization at LHC, Nucl. Phys. B964, 115317 (2021).
  14. W. Bizoń, F. Caola, K. Melnikov, and R. Röntsch, Anomalous couplings in associated VH production with Higgs boson decay to massive b quarks at NNLO in QCD, Phys. Rev. D 105, 014023 (2022).
  15. T. Corbett, O. J. P. Eboli, J. Gonzalez-Fraile, and M. C. Gonzalez-Garcia, Constraining anomalous Higgs interactions, Phys. Rev. D 86, 075013 (2012).
  16. T. Corbett, O. J. P. Eboli, J. Gonzalez-Fraile, and M. C. Gonzalez-Garcia, Robust determination of the Higgs couplings: Power to the data, Phys. Rev. D 87, 015022 (2013).
  17. S. Bhattacharya, S. Biswas, and A. Sarkar, Higgs couplings in SMEFT via zh production at the HL-LHC, Phys. Rev. D 111, 115038 (2025).
  18. K. Hagiwara and M. L. Stong, Probing the scalar sector in e+e−−>f anti-f H, Z. Phys. C 62, 99 (1994).
  19. K. Hagiwara, S. Ishihara, J. Kamoshita, and B. A. Kniehl, Prospects of measuring general Higgs couplings at e+ e− linear colliders, Eur. Phys. J. C 14, 457 (2000).
  20. S. S. Biswal, R. M. Godbole, R. K. Singh, and D. Choudhury, Signatures of anomalous VVH interactions at a linear collider, Phys. Rev. D 73, 035001 (2006); 74, 039904(E) (2006).
  21. S. S. Biswal, D. Choudhury, R. M. Godbole, and Mamta, Role of polarization in probing anomalous gauge interactions of the Higgs boson, Phys. Rev. D 79, 035012 (2009).
  22. S. S. Biswal and R. M. Godbole, Use of transverse beam polarization to probe anomalous VVH interactions at a linear collider, Phys. Lett. B 680, 81 (2009).
  23. S. D. Rindani and P. Sharma, Decay-lepton correlations as probes of anomalous ZZH and gammaZH interactions in e+e−−> ZH with polarized beams, Phys. Lett. B 693, 134 (2010).
  24. S. D. Rindani and P. Sharma, Angular distributions as a probe of anomalous ZZH and gammaZH interactions at a linear collider with polarized beams, Phys. Rev. D 79, 075007 (2009).
  25. I. Anderson et al., Constraining anomalous HVV interactions at proton and lepton colliders, Phys. Rev. D 89, 035007 (2014).
  26. N. Craig, J. Gu, Z. Liu, and K. Wang, Beyond Higgs couplings: Probing the Higgs with angular observables at future e+e− colliders, J. High Energy Phys. 03 (2015) 050.
  27. M. Beneke, D. Boito, and Y.-M. Wang, Anomalous Higgs couplings in angular asymmetries of H→Zℓ+ℓ− and e+ e−→HZ, J. High Energy Phys. 11 (2014) 028.
  28. H. Khanpour and M. Mohammadi Najafabadi, Constraining Higgs boson effective couplings at electron-positron colliders, Phys. Rev. D 95, 055026 (2017).
  29. T. V. Zagoskin and A. Y. Korchin, Higgs boson ZZ couplings in Higgs-strahlung at the ILC, Phys. Rev. D 98, 093008 (2018).
  30. H.-D. Li, C.-D. Lü, and L.-Y. Shan, Sensitivity study of anomalous HZZ couplings at a future Higgs factory, Chin. Phys. C 43, 103001 (2019).
  31. W. H. Chiu, S. C. Leung, T. Liu, K.-F. Lyu, and L.-T. Wang, Probing 6D operators at future e−e+ colliders, J. High Energy Phys. 05 (2017) 081.
  32. G. Durieux, C. Grojean, J. Gu, and K. Wang, The leptonic future of the Higgs, J. High Energy Phys. 09 (2017) 014.
  33. A. Subba, R. K. Singh, and R. M. Godbole, Looking into the quantum entanglement in H→ZZ⋆ at LHC within SMEFT framework, arXiv:2411.19171.
  34. A. Subba and R. K. Singh, Bounds on SMEFT affecting multi gauge and Higgs-gauge couplings using two and three body spin correlations in e−e+→3l2jE process, arXiv:2509.01452.
  35. A. Atwal et al., Future collider perspectives on Higgs CP violation, arXiv:2511.08359.
  36. M. Ruhdorfer, E. Salvioni, and A. Wulzer, Building the case for forward muon detection at a muon collider, Phys. Rev. D 111, 053010 (2025).
  37. T. Ogawa, J. Tian, and K. Fujii, Sensitivity to anomalous ZZH couplings at the ILC, Proc. Sci., EPS-HEP2017 (2017) 322 [arXiv:1712.09772].
  38. G. Aarons et al. (ILC Collaboration), International Linear Collider reference design report volume 2: Physics at the ILC, arXiv:0709.1893.
  39. G. Aarons et al. (ILC Collaboration), ILC reference design report volume 1—executive summary, arXiv:0712.1950.
  40. G. Aarons et al. (ILC Collaboration), ILC reference design report volume 4—detectors, arXiv:0712.2356.
  41. The International Linear Collider Technical design report—volume 2: Physics, arXiv:1306.6352.
  42. The International Linear Collider technical design report—volume 3.II: Accelerator baseline design, arXiv:1306.6328.
  43. S. Bhattacharya, A. Subba, and A. Sarkar, Optimal estimation of Higgs-Gauge boson couplings at the future e+e− colliders, Phys. Rev. D 112, 115018 (2025).
  44. W. Buchmuller and D. Wyler, Effective Lagrangian analysis of new interactions and flavor conservation, Nucl. Phys. B268, 621 (1986).
  45. B. Grzadkowski, M. Iskrzynski, M. Misiak, and J. Rosiek, Dimension-six terms in the standard model Lagrangian, J. High Energy Phys. 10 (2010) 085.
  46. A. Hayrapetyan et al. (CMS Collaboration), Constraints on anomalous Higgs boson couplings from its production and decay using the WW channel in proton–proton collisions at s=13  TeV, Eur. Phys. J. C 84, 779 (2024).
  47. K. Rao, S. D. Rindani, and P. Sarmah, Probing anomalous gauge-Higgs couplings using Z boson polarization at e+e− colliders, Nucl. Phys. B950, 114840 (2020).
  48. K. Rao, S. D. Rindani, P. Sarmah, and B. Singh, Z polarization at an e+e− collider and properties of decay-lepton angular asymmetries, Proc. Indian Natl. Sci. Acad., Part A 90, 664 (2024).
  49. F. Boudjema and R. K. Singh, A model independent spin analysis of fundamental particles using azimuthal asymmetries, J. High Energy Phys. 07 (2009) 028.
  50. R. Rahaman and R. K. Singh, Breaking down the entire spectrum of spin correlations of a pair of particles involving fermions and gauge bosons, Nucl. Phys. B984, 115984 (2022).
  51. A. Subba and R. K. Singh, Role of polarizations and spin-spin correlations of W’s in e−e+W−W+ at s=250  GeV to probe anomalous W−W+Z/γ couplings, Phys. Rev. D 107, 073004 (2023).
  52. J. Alwall, M. Herquet, F. Maltoni, O. Mattelaer, and T. Stelzer, MadGraph 5: Going beyond, J. High Energy Phys. 06 (2011) 128.
  53. C. Bierlich et al., A comprehensive guide to the physics and usage of pythia 8.3, SciPost Phys. Codebases 2022, 8 (2022).
  54. J. de Favereau, C. Delaere, P. Demin, A. Giammanco, V. Lemaître, A. Mertens, and M. Selvaggi (DELPHES 3 Collaboration), delphes 3, A modular framework for fast simulation of a generic collider experiment, J. High Energy Phys. 02 (2013) 057.
  55. A. Subba and R. K. Singh, Study of anomalous W−W+γ/Z couplings using polarizations and spin correlations in e−e+→W−W+ with polarized beams, Eur. Phys. J. C 83, 1119 (2023).
  56. M. Cacciari, G. P. Salam, and G. Soyez, The anti-kt jet clustering algorithm, J. High Energy Phys. 04 (2008) 063.
  57. T. Chen and C. Guestrin, Xgboost: A scalable tree boosting system, in Proceedings of the 22nd ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, KDD ’16 (ACM, 2016), pp. 785–794.

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. D 113, 055018– Published 6 March, 2026
  • Received 1 December 2025
  • Accepted 13 February 2026
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation