Influence of new states in searches for negative gauge-Higgs couplings

A bstract In this work, we explore how constraints based on interference effects for the negative gauge-Higgs coupling scenario are affected by new physics. Models that achieve this wrong-sign gauge-Higgs coupling inevitably have new charged Higgs states. These states affect the interpretation of interference effects. We recast the ATLAS analysis for VBF Wh , showing that the previously excluded negative gauge-Higgs coupling scenario is still experimentally viable for charged Higgs masses below 370 GeV. We show that it is possible to weaken this bound further with mild tuning in the parameter space. We discuss how to further constrain the wrong-sign gauge-Higgs coupling hypothesis and point out the potential of VBF Zh to exclude this scenario in a model-independent way.