Unitarity constraints on dimension-six operators. II. Including fermionic operators

Abstract

We analyze the scattering of fermions, Higgs and electroweak gauge bosons in order to obtain the partial-wave unitarity bounds on dimension-six effective operators, including those involving fermions. We also quantify whether, at the LHC energies, the dimension-six operators lead to unitarity violation after taking into account the presently available constraints on their Wilson coefficients. Our results show that for most dimension-six operators relevant for the LHC physics there is no unitarity violation at the LHC energies, and consequently, there is no need for the introduction of form factors in the experimental and phenomenological analyses, making them model independent. We also identify two operators for which unitarity violation is still an issue at the LHC Run-II.