Multiphoton decays of the Higgs boson in the standard model: Leading terms from the Heisenberg-Euler effective Lagrangian

Abstract

We study the multiphoton decays of the Higgs boson from an effective Lagrangian for a system of electromagnetic and Higgs fields. We utilize a low-energy theorem to connect the above Lagrangian to the Heisenberg-Euler effective Lagrangian induced by charged particles that gain mass from interactions with the Higgs boson. In the standard model, only the ${W}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}$ gauge bosons and the top quark are relevant, and we compute their contributions to the effective couplings and the radiative decay widths of the Higgs boson up to six photons.