- Open Access
Investigating the leptonic couplings of doubly charged scalars at the muon collider
Phys. Rev. D 113, 055048 – Published 26 March, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/jbq9-jy42
Abstract
We study the lepton flavor conserving and violating couplings of a doubly charged scalar at a 3 TeV muon collider. Using a model-independent Lagrangian, we analyze the , , and final states mediated by the doubly charged scalar to probe individual couplings to , , and . We find that for a doubly charged scalar of mass greater than 1 TeV and couplings, we achieve high signal significance in these channels. We delineate the collider’s sensitivity in the mass-coupling plane, highlighting the extensive reach of the muon collider in probing these couplings far beyond the current experimental limits. We also propose an angular distribution variable to discriminate between the exchange of a doubly charged scalar from that of a neutral scalar, which gives identical signals.
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Article Text
References (121)
- 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).
- 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).
- D. A. Ross and M. J. G. Veltman, Neutral currents in neutrino experiments, Nucl. Phys. B95, 135 (1975).
- J. F. Gunion, R. Vega, and J. Wudka, Higgs triplets in the standard model, Phys. Rev. D 42, 1673 (1990).
- T. Nomura and H. Okada, Muon with multiplets, Chin. Phys. C 49, 043102 (2025).
- M. Magg and C. Wetterich, Neutrino mass problem and gauge hierarchy, Phys. Lett. B 94, 61 (1980).
- R. N. Mohapatra and J. C. Pati, A natural left-right symmetry, Phys. Rev. D 11, 2558 (1975).
- G. Senjanovic and R. N. Mohapatra, Exact left-right symmetry and spontaneous violation of parity, Phys. Rev. D 12, 1502 (1975).
- R. N. Mohapatra and G. Senjanovic, Neutrino mass and spontaneous parity nonconservation, Phys. Rev. Lett. 44, 912 (1980).
- N. G. Deshpande, J. F. Gunion, B. Kayser, and F. I. Olness, Left-right symmetric electroweak models with triplet Higgs, Phys. Rev. D 44, 837 (1991).
- B. Brahmachari, E. Ma, and U. Sarkar, Truly minimal left right model of quark and lepton masses, Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 011801 (2003).
- R. N. Mohapatra, Left-right symmetry and finite one loop dirac neutrino mass, Phys. Lett. B 201, 517 (1988).
- B. S. Balakrishna and R. N. Mohapatra, Radiative fermion masses from new physics at TeV scale, Phys. Lett. B 216, 349 (1989).
- E. Ma, Verifiable radiative seesaw mechanism of neutrino mass and dark matter, Phys. Rev. D 73, 077301 (2006).
- P.-H. Gu and U. Sarkar, Radiative neutrino mass, dark matter and leptogenesis, Phys. Rev. D 77, 105031 (2008).
- S. Saad, Simplest radiative dirac neutrino mass models, Nucl. Phys. B943, 114636 (2019).
- K. S. Babu, P. S. B. Dev, S. Jana, and A. Thapa, Non-standard interactions in radiative neutrino mass models, J. High Energy Phys. 03 (2020) 006.
- M. Aoki and D. Kaneko, A hybrid seesaw model and hierarchical neutrino flavor structures based on symmetry, Prog. Theor. Exp. Phys. 2021, 023B06 (2021).
- S. P. Maharathy, M. Mitra, and A. Sarkar, An alternate left-right symmetric model with Dirac neutrinos, Eur. Phys. J. C 83, 480 (2023).
- A. Giarnetti, J. Herrero-Garcia, S. Marciano, D. Meloni, and D. Vatsyayan, Neutrino masses from new Weinberg-like operators: Phenomenology of TeV scalar multiplets, J. High Energy Phys. 05 (2024) 055.
- A. Giarnetti, J. Herrero-García, S. Marciano, D. Meloni, and D. Vatsyayan, Neutrino masses from new seesaw models: Low-scale variants and phenomenological implications, Eur. Phys. J. C 84, 803 (2024).
- S. Jana, S. Klett, M. Lindner, and R. N. Mohapatra, Radiative origin of fermion mass hierarchy in left-right symmetric theory, J. High Energy Phys. 01 (2025) 082.
- Z. A. Borboruah, L. Malhotra, U. Patel, S. Patra, and S. U. Sankar, Left-right symmetric neutrino mass model without scalar bi-doublet, arXiv:2504.08267.
- ATLAS Collaboration, Search for doubly-charged Higgs bosons in like-sign dilepton final states at with the ATLAS detector, Eur. Phys. J. C 72, 2244 (2012).
- ATLAS Collaboration, Search for anomalous production of prompt same-sign lepton pairs and pair-produced doubly charged Higgs bosons with collisions using the ATLAS detector, J. High Energy Phys. 03 (2015) 041.
- ATLAS Collaboration, Search for doubly charged Higgs boson production in multi-lepton final states with the ATLAS detector using proton–proton collisions at , Eur. Phys. J. C 78, 199 (2018).
- ATLAS Collaboration, Search for doubly charged scalar bosons decaying into same-sign boson pairs with the ATLAS detector, Eur. Phys. J. C 79, 58 (2019).
- ATLAS Collaboration, Search for doubly and singly charged Higgs bosons decaying into vector bosons in multi-lepton final states with the ATLAS detector using proton-proton collisions at , J. High Energy Phys. 06 (2021) 146.
- CMS Collaboration, A search for a doubly-charged Higgs boson in collisions at , Eur. Phys. J. C 72, 2189 (2012).
- CMS Collaboration, Study of vector boson scattering and search for new physics in events with two same-sign leptons and two jets, Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 051801 (2015).
- CMS Collaboration, Search for a doubly-charged Higgs boson with collisions at the CMS experiment, Report No. CMS-PAS-HIG-14-039, 2016.
- CMS Collaboration, A search for doubly-charged Higgs boson production in three and four lepton final states at , Report No. CMS-PAS-HIG-16-036, 2017.
- CMS Collaboration, Observation of electroweak production of same-sign W boson pairs in the two jet and two same-sign lepton final state in proton-proton collisions at , Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 081801 (2018).
- S. Ashanujjaman and K. Ghosh, Revisiting type-II see-saw: Present limits and future prospects at LHC, J. High Energy Phys. 03 (2022) 195.
- Linear Collider American Working Group, Linear Collider physics resource book for Snowmass 2001—Part 2: Higgs and supersymmetry studies, in APS/DPF/DPB Summer Study on the Future of Particle Physics (2001).
- ECFA/DESY LC Physics Working Group, TESLA: The superconducting electron positron linear collider with an integrated x-ray laser laboratory. Technical design report. Part 3. Physics at an linear collider, arXiv:hep-ph/0106315.
- Linear Collider ACFA Working Group, Particle physics experiments at JLC, arXiv:hep-ph/0109166.
- CLIC Physics Working Group, Physics at the CLIC multi-TeV linear collider, in 11th International Conference on Hadron Spectroscopy, CERN Yellow Reports: Monographs, Vol. 6 (2004).
- ILC Collaboration, The international linear collider technical design report—Volume 2: Physics, arXiv:1306.6352.
- A. Arbey et al., Physics at the linear collider, Eur. Phys. J. C 75, 371 (2015).
- Linear Collider Vision Collaboration, A Linear Collider Vision for the future of particle physics, arXiv:2503.19983.
- Linear Collider Collaboration, The Linear Collider facility (LCF) at CERN, arXiv:2503.24049.
- R. Godbole, B. Mukhopadhyaya, and M. Nowakowski, Triplet Higgs bosons at colliders, Phys. Lett. B 352, 388 (1995).
- K.-m. Cheung, R. J. N. Phillips, and A. Pilaftsis, Signatures of Higgs triplet representations at TeV colliders, Phys. Rev. D 51, 4731 (1995).
- K. Yagyu, Doubly-charged Higgs bosons in the diboson decay scenario at the ILC, in International Workshop on Future Linear Colliders (2014).
- C.-W. Chiang, S. Kanemura, and K. Yagyu, Phenomenology of the Georgi-Machacek model at future electron-positron colliders, Phys. Rev. D 93, 055002 (2016).
- S. Blunier, G. Cottin, M. A. Díaz, and B. Koch, Phenomenology of a Higgs triplet model at future colliders, Phys. Rev. D 95, 075038 (2017).
- A. Crivellin, M. Ghezzi, L. Panizzi, G. M. Pruna, and A. Signer, Low- and high-energy phenomenology of a doubly charged scalar, Phys. Rev. D 99, 035004 (2019).
- X.-H. Bai, Z.-L. Han, Y. Jin, H.-L. Li, and Z.-X. Meng, Same-sign tetralepton signature in type-II seesaw at lepton colliders, Chin. Phys. C 46, 012001 (2022).
- N. Kumar, Unconventional searches for exotic particles at future lepton colliders, EPJ Web Conf. 315, 01034 (2024).
- W. Altmannshofer and P. Munbodh, Probing lepton flavor violation at linear electron-positron colliders, J. High Energy Phys. 08 (2025) 147.
- International Muon Collider Collaboration, https://muoncollider.web.cern.ch/.
- J. P. Delahaye, M. Diemoz, K. Long, B. Mansoulié, N. Pastrone, L. Rivkin et al., Muon Colliders, arXiv:1901.06150.
- D. Schulte, J.-P. Delahaye, M. Diemoz, K. Long, B. Mansoulié, N. Patrone et al., Muon Collider. A path to the future?, Proc. Sci., EPS-HEP2019 (2020) 004.
- International Muon Collider Collaboration, The Muon Collider, JACoW IPAC2022 (2022) 821.
- International Muon Collider Collaboration, Interim report for the International Muon Collider Collaboration (IMCC), CERN Yellow Rep. Monogr. 2, 176 (2024).
- M. Begel et al., United States Muon Collider community white paper for the European strategy for particle physics update, arXiv:2503.23695.
- A. Costantini, F. De Lillo, F. Maltoni, L. Mantani, O. Mattelaer, R. Ruiz, and X. Zhao, Vector boson fusion at multi-TeV muon colliders, J. High Energy Phys. 09 (2020) 080.
- T. Han, Y. Ma, and K. Xie, High energy leptonic collisions and electroweak parton distribution functions, Phys. Rev. D 103, L031301 (2021).
- T. Han, Y. Ma, and K. Xie, Quark and gluon contents of a lepton at high energies, J. High Energy Phys. 02 (2022) 154.
- H. Al Ali et al., The muon Smasher’s guide, Rep. Prog. Phys. 85, 084201 (2022).
- Muon Collider Collaboration, The physics case of a 3 TeV muon collider stage, arXiv:2203.07261.
- C. Accettura et al., Towards a muon collider, Eur. Phys. J. C 83, 864 (2023).
- A. K. Barik, S. K. Rai, and A. Srivastava, Discovering an invisible at the muon collider, Phys. Lett. B 866, 139533 (2025).
- Y. Abe et al., Status of the International Linear Collider, arXiv:2505.11292.
- P. Chen, T. L. Barklow, and M. E. Peskin, Hadron production in gamma gamma collisions as a background for linear colliders, Phys. Rev. D 49, 3209 (1994).
- T. Barklow et al., Beam delivery and beamstrahlung considerations for ultra-high energy linear colliders, J. Instrum. 18, P09022 (2023).
- International Muon Collider Collaboration, Higgs physics prospects at a 3 TeV muon collider, Proc. Sci., EPS-HEP2023 (2024) 408.
- J. Braathen, M. Gabelmann, T. Robens, and P. Stylianou, Probing the inert doublet model via vector-boson fusion at a muon collider, J. High Energy Phys. 05 (2025) 055.
- M. Chiesa, B. Mele, and F. Piccinini, Multi Higgs production via photon fusion at future multi-TeV muon colliders, Eur. Phys. J. C 84, 543 (2024).
- N. Ghosh, S. K. Rai, and T. Samui, Collider signatures of a scalar leptoquark and vectorlike lepton in light of muon anomaly, Phys. Rev. D 107, 035028 (2023).
- R. Franceschini, Multiplexing new physics search at high-energy lepton colliders, Int. J. Mod. Phys. A 37, 2246007 (2022).
- K. Mękała, J. Reuter, and A. F. Żarnecki, Optimal search reach for heavy neutral leptons at a muon collider, Phys. Lett. B 841, 137945 (2023).
- A. Belyaev, R. S. Chivukula, B. Fuks, E. H. Simmons, and X. Wang, Vectorlike top quark production via an electroweak dipole moment at a muon collider, Phys. Rev. D 108, 035016 (2023).
- T. Li, C.-Y. Yao, and M. Yuan, Searching for heavy neutral lepton and lepton number violation through VBS at high-energy muon colliders, J. High Energy Phys. 09 (2023) 131.
- N. Ghosh, S. K. Rai, and T. Samui, Search for a leptoquark and vector-like lepton in a muon collider, Nucl. Phys. B1004, 116564 (2024).
- P. Asadi, A. Radick, and T.-T. Yu, Interplay of freeze-in and freeze-out: Lepton-flavored dark matter and muon colliders, Phys. Rev. D 110, 035022 (2024).
- Q. Bi, J. Guo, J. Liu, Y. Luo, and X.-P. Wang, Long-lived sterile neutrino searches at future muon colliders, Phys. Rev. D 111, 075001 (2025).
- P. Bandyopadhyay and S. Parashar, Probing a scalar singlet-triplet extension of the standard model via vector boson fusion at a muon collider, Phys. Rev. D 110, 115032 (2024).
- L. Zhao, H. Li, Z.-L. Han, F. Huang, and X. Yan, Extra charged gauge boson in alternative left-right model at future muon collider, Chin. Phys. 49, 123102 (2025).
- T. Han, M. Low, T. A. Wu, and K. Xie, Colorful particle production at high-energy muon colliders, J. High Energy Phys. 06 (2025) 109.
- International Muon Collider Collaboration, The Muon Collider, arXiv:2504.21417.
- F. Abu-Ajamieh, S. Modak, S. Mukherjee, and S. K. Vempati, Pseudoscalar Higgs production at Muon Colliders: The role of one-loop effective vertices, arXiv:2505.02092.
- F.-X. Yang, F.-L. Shao, Z.-L. Han, F. Huang, Y. Jin, and H. Li, Lepton number violation Higgs decay at muon collider, J. High Energy Phys. 09 (2025) 200.
- M. Mitra, S. Niyogi, and M. Spannowsky, Type-II seesaw model and multilepton signatures at hadron colliders, Phys. Rev. D 95, 035042 (2017).
- D. K. Ghosh, N. Ghosh, I. Saha, and A. Shaw, Revisiting the high-scale validity of the type II seesaw model with novel LHC signature, Phys. Rev. D 97, 115022 (2018).
- D. Kumar Ghosh, N. Ghosh, and B. Mukhopadhyaya, Distinctive collider signals for a two Higgs triplet model, Phys. Rev. D 99, 015036 (2019).
- R. Padhan, D. Das, M. Mitra, and A. Kumar Nayak, Probing doubly and singly charged Higgs bosons at the collider HE-LHC, Phys. Rev. D 101, 075050 (2020).
- A. Jueid, T. A. Chowdhury, S. Nasri, and S. Saad, Probing Zee-Babu states at muon colliders, Phys. Rev. D 109, 075011 (2024).
- T. Li, C.-Y. Yao, and M. Yuan, Revealing the origin of neutrino masses through the Type II seesaw mechanism at high-energy muon colliders, J. High Energy Phys. 03 (2023) 137.
- S. P. Maharathy and M. Mitra, Type-II see-saw at collider, Phys. Lett. B 844, 138105 (2023).
- J.-C. Jia, Z.-L. Han, F. Huang, Y. Jin, and H. Li, Production of single doubly charged Higgs bosons at muon colliders, Phys. Rev. D 111, 015009 (2025).
- J. Schechter and J. W. F. Valle, Neutrino masses in theories, Phys. Rev. D 22, 2227 (1980).
- P. S. B. Dev, S. Khan, M. Mitra, and S. K. Rai, Doubly-charged Higgs boson at a future electron-proton collider, Phys. Rev. D 99, 115015 (2019).
- A. Zee, Quantum numbers of Majorana neutrino masses, Nucl. Phys. B264, 99 (1986).
- K. S. Babu, Model of ‘Calculable’ Majorana neutrino masses, Phys. Lett. B 203, 132 (1988).
- P. S. Bhupal Dev and Y. Zhang, Displaced vertex signatures of doubly charged scalars in the Type-II seesaw and its left-right extensions, J. High Energy Phys. 10 (2018) 199.
- Y. Cheng, X.-G. He, Z.-L. Huang, and M.-W. Li, Type-II seesaw triplet scalar effects on neutrino trident scattering, Phys. Lett. B 831, 137218 (2022).
- J. Kersten, J.-h. Park, D. Stöckinger, and L. Velasco-Sevilla, Understanding the correlation between and in the MSSM, J. High Energy Phys. 08 (2014) 118.
- S. Davidson and G. J. Grenier, Lepton flavour violating Higgs and tau to mu gamma, Phys. Rev. D 81, 095016 (2010).
- S. Davidson, in the 2HDM: An exercise in EFT, Eur. Phys. J. C 76, 258 (2016).
- A. G. Akeroyd, M. Aoki, and H. Sugiyama, Lepton flavour violating decays and in the Higgs triplet model, Phys. Rev. D 79, 113010 (2009).
- M. Lindner, M. Platscher, and F. S. Queiroz, A call for new physics: The Muon anomalous magnetic moment and lepton flavor violation, Phys. Rep. 731, 1 (2018).
- L. Willmann et al., New bounds from searching for muonium to anti-muonium conversion, Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 49 (1999).
- MEG Collaboration, Search for the lepton flavour violating decay with the full dataset of the MEG experiment, Eur. Phys. J. C 76, 434 (2016).
- SINDRUM Collaboration, Search for the decay , Nucl. Phys. B299, 1 (1988).
- BABAR Collaboration, Searches for lepton flavor violation in the decays and , Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 021802 (2010).
- Belle Collaboration, Search for lepton-flavor-violating tau-lepton decays to at Belle, J. High Energy Phys. 10 (2021) 019.
- K. Hayasaka et al., Search for lepton flavor violating tau decays into three leptons with 719 million produced pairs, Phys. Lett. B 687, 139 (2010).
- DELPHI Collaboration, Measurement and interpretation of fermion-pair production at LEP energies above the Z resonance, Eur. Phys. J. C 45, 589 (2006).
- G. C. Branco, P. M. Ferreira, L. Lavoura, M. N. Rebelo, M. Sher, and J. P. Silva, Theory and phenomenology of two-Higgs-doublet models, Phys. Rep. 516, 1 (2012).
- P. Asadi, H. Bagherian, K. Fraser, S. Homiller, and Q. Lu, Lepton flavor violation: From muon decays to muon colliders, Phys. Rev. D 113, 015003 (2026).
- Mu3e Collaboration, Technical design of the phase I Mu3e experiment, Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res., Sect. A 1014, 165679 (2021).
- ATLAS Collaboration, Search for doubly charged Higgs boson production in multi-lepton final states using of proton–proton collisions at with the ATLAS detector, Eur. Phys. J. C 83, 605 (2023).
- A. Alloul, N. D. Christensen, C. Degrande, C. Duhr, and B. Fuks, FeynRules 2.0—A complete toolbox for tree-level phenomenology, Comput. Phys. Commun. 185, 2250 (2014).
- J. Alwall, M. Herquet, F. Maltoni, O. Mattelaer, and T. Stelzer, MadGraph 5: Going beyond, J. High Energy Phys. 06 (2011) 128.
- T. Sjöstrand, S. Ask, J. R. Christiansen, R. Corke, N. Desai, P. Ilten et al., An introduction to PYTHIA 8.2, Comput. Phys. Commun. 191, 159 (2015).
- DELPHES 3 Collaboration, DELPHES 3, A modular framework for fast simulation of a generic collider experiment, J. High Energy Phys. 02 (2014) 057.
- M. Selvaggi, Delphes card for muon collider, https://indico.cern.ch/event/957299/contributions/4023467/attachments/2106044/3541874/delphes_card_mucol_mdi_.pdf, 2020.
- G. Cowan, K. Cranmer, E. Gross, and O. Vitells, Asymptotic formulae for likelihood-based tests of new physics, Eur. Phys. J. C 71, 1554 (2011).
- B. Bhattacherjee, A. Kundu, S. K. Rai, and S. Raychaudhuri, Universal extra dimensions, radiative returns and the inverse problem at a linear collider, Phys. Rev. D 78, 115005 (2008).