Collider signatures of flavorful Higgs bosons

Abstract

Motivated by our limited knowledge of the Higgs couplings to the first two generation fermions, we analyze the collider phenomenology of a class of two Higgs doublet models (2HDMs) with a nonstandard Yukawa sector. One Higgs doublet is mainly responsible for the masses of the weak gauge bosons and the third-generation fermions, while the second Higgs doublet provides mass for the lighter fermion generations. The characteristic collider signatures of this setup differ significantly from well-studied 2HDMs with natural flavor conservation, flavor alignment, or minimal flavor violation. New production mechanisms for the heavy scalar, pseudoscalar, and charged Higgs involving second-generation quarks can become dominant. The most interesting decay modes include $H/A\ensuremath{\rightarrow}cc,tc,\ensuremath{\mu}\ensuremath{\mu},\ensuremath{\tau}\ensuremath{\mu}$ and ${H}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}cb,cs,\ensuremath{\mu}\ensuremath{\nu}$. Searches for low-mass dimuon resonances are currently among the best probes of the heavy Higgs bosons in this setup.