Directly probing the Higgs-top coupling at high scales

Abstract

We explore the sensitivity to new physics for the coupling of the Higgs boson (h) and top quark (t) at high energy scales with the process pp→tt¯h at the high-luminosity LHC. This process probes the coupling in both the space-like and time-like domains at a high scale, complementary to the off-shell Higgs processes in the time-like domain. The effects from physics beyond the Standard Model are parametrized in terms of the effective field theory framework and a non-local Higgs-top form factor. Focusing on the boosted Higgs regime in association with jet substructure techniques, we show that the present search can directly probe the Higgs-top coupling to good precision, providing a strong sensitivity to the new physics scale.