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Higgs couplings in SMEFT via Zh production at the HL-LHC

Subhaditya Bhattacharya1,*, Sanjoy Biswas2,†, and Abhik Sarkar1,‡

  • *Contact author: subhab@iitg.ac.in
  • †Contact author: sanjoy.phy@gm.rkmvu.ac.in
  • ‡Contact author: sarkar.abhik@iitg.ac.in
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Phys. Rev. D 111, 115038 – Published 30 June, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/h3wk-gnfb

Abstract

We study the Higgs couplings involved in the Zh associated production mode at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in presence of Higgs-gauge boson coupling modifiers via κ framework and dimension-six Standard Model (SM) effective theory operators. The analysis is performed mainly in the context of the High-Luminosity LHC (with s=14  TeV and luminosity 3000  fb−1) setup using cut-based as well as machine learning techniques. The analysis shows significant betterment in the signal significance by using the machine learning technique. We also do a χ2 analysis, which reveals an appreciable change in the sensitivity of the coupling modifiers due to the presence of effective operators, in particular, due to the qqZh Higgs-current interactions. The dipole operators concerning the same vertex combine quarks of different chiralities and do not interfere with the SM diagrams, hence contributing only at O(Λ−4). In order to observe better sensitivity for this class of operators, we need to move to higher center-of-mass energy, where the effects of both Higgs-current and dipole four-point interactions are more prominent.

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Corrections

5 August, 2025

Correction: A grant number was missing in the Acknowledgments section and has been inserted.

Article Text

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Phys. Rev. D 111, 115038– Published 30 June, 2025
  • Received 16 November 2024
  • Accepted 10 June 2025
  • Corrected 5 August 2025
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