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→ϕ0→τ∓μ±+X, where ϕ0 could be a CP-even scalar (h0, H0) or a CP-odd pseudoscalar (A0). The light Higgs boson h0 is found to resemble closely the Standard Model Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider. In the alignment limit of cos⁡(β−α)≅0 for h0–H0 mixing, FCNH couplings of h0 are naturally suppressed, but such couplings of the heavier H0,A0 are sustained by sin⁡(β−α)≃1. We evaluate physics backgrounds from dominant processes with realistic acceptance cuts and tagging efficiencies. We find promising results for s=14 TeV, which we extend further to s=27 TeV and 100 TeV future pp colliders.