Flavor Changing Heavy Higgs Interactions with Leptons at Hadron Colliders

Abstract

In a general two Higgs doublet model, we study flavor changing neutral Higgs (FCNH) decays into leptons at hadron colliders, $pp\to {\varphi }^0\to {\tau }^{\mp }{\mu }^{\pm }+X$, where ${\varphi }^0$ could be a CP-even scalar ($h^0$, $H^0$) or a CP-odd pseudoscalar ($A^0$). The light Higgs boson $h^0$ is found to resemble closely the Standard Model Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider. In the alignment limit of $\cos (\beta -\alpha )\cong 0$ for $h^0$--$H^0$ mixing, FCNH couplings of $h^0$ are naturally suppressed, but such couplings of the heavier $H^0,A^0$ are sustained by $\sin (\beta -\alpha )\simeq 1$. We evaluate physics backgrounds from dominant processes with realistic acceptance cuts and tagging efficiencies. We find promising results for $\sqrt{s}=14$ TeV, which we extend further to $\sqrt{s}=27$ TeV and 100 TeV future pp colliders.

Version to appear in Physics Letters B

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