Rare few-body decays of the Standard Model Higgs boson
We present a survey of rare and exclusive few-body decays of the standard model (SM) Higgs boson, defined as those into two to four final particles with branching fractions \mathcal{B} ≲ 10^{-5} <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mstyle mathvariant="script"> <mml:mi>ℬ</mml:mi> </mml:mstyle> <mml:mo>≲</mml:mo> <mml:msup> <mml:mn>10</mml:mn> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> <mml:mn>5</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msup> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> . Studies of such decays can be exploited to constrain Yukawa couplings of quarks and leptons, probe flavour-changing Higgs decays, estimate backgrounds for exotic Higgs decays into beyond-SM particles, and/or confirm quantum chromodynamics factorization with small nonperturbative corrections. We collect the theoretical \mathcal{B} <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:mstyle mathvariant="script"> <mml:mi>ℬ</mml:mi> </mml:mstyle> </mml:math> values for about 70 unobserved Higgs rare decay channels, indicating their current experimental limits, and estimating their expected bounds in p-p collisions at the HL-LHC. Among those, we include 20 new decay channels computed for the first time for ultrarare Higgs boson decays into photons and/or neutrinos, radiative quark-flavour-changing exclusive decays, and radiative decays into leptonium states. This survey can help guide and prioritize upcoming experimental and theoretical studies of unobserved Higgs boson decays.
Authors
- Van Dung Le (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0006-2306-1000)
- David d'Enterria
Institutions
- Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City (VN)
- European Organization for Nuclear Research (CH)
Publication Details
- Journal
- SciPost Physics Community Reports
- Published
- 2026-02-19
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.21468/scipostphyscommrep.20
- Primary Topic
- Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- Strong
- Horizon 2020 Framework Programme