Search for lepton flavor violating decays of Higgs boson into mu-tau and e-tau final states
Prasanna Siddireddy, Graduate Student
University of Notre Dame
Searches for the charged lepton flavor violating processes have a long history, and their importance stems from their potential to probe physics higher than the TeV scale. The small natural width of the Higgs Boson easily accommodates interactions with previously undiscovered physics sectors, making the search for exotic decays associated with a Higgs Boson a rich phenomenological territory to explore. Some beyond the standard model theories allow for lepton flavor violating decays of the Higgs boson, and observing such decays will be a clear sign of new physics. A search for the Higgs boson decaying into mu-tau and e-tau final states has been performed using the full Run 2 data collected at the CMS experiment. These search results are expressed in terms of the upper limits on the branching fraction of the Higgs boson decaying into these final states. They are correspondingly translated into limits on the Yukawa couplings. I will discuss the various analysis techniques involved in the analysis, the results, and their interpretation.
All interested persons are invited to attend remotely—email physics@nd.edu for information.