No Arabic abstract
We study a class of DFSZ-like models for the QCD axion that can address observed anomalies in stellar cooling. Stringent constraints from SN1987A and neutron stars are avoided by suppressed couplings to nucleons, while axion couplings to electrons and photons are sizable. All axion couplings depend on few parameters that also control the extended Higgs sector, in particular lepton flavor-violating couplings of the Standard Model-like Higgs boson $h$. This allows us to correlate axion and Higgs phenomenology, and we find that that ${rm BR}(h to tau e)$ can be as large as the current experimental bound of 0.22%, while ${rm BR} (h to mu mu)$ can be larger than in the Standard Model by up to 70%. Large parts of the parameter space will be tested by the next generation of axion helioscopes such as the IAXO experiment.
A number of observations of stellar systems show a mild preference for anomalously fast cooling compared with what predicted in the standard theory, which leads to a speculation that there exists an additional energy loss mechanism originated from the emission of axions in stars. We revisit the global analysis of the stellar cooling anomalies by adopting conservative assessments on several systematic uncertainties and find that the significance of the cooling hints becomes weaker but still indicates a non-vanishing axion-electron coupling at around 2.4$,sigma$. With the revised analysis results, we explore the possibility that such excessive energy losses are interpreted in the framework of variant axion models, which require two Higgs doublets and flavor-dependent Peccei-Quinn charge assignments. These models resolve two fundamental issues faced in the traditional KSVZ/DFSZ models by predicting a sizable axion coupling to electrons required to explain the cooling anomalies and at the same time providing a solution to the cosmological domain wall problem. We also find that a specific structure of the axion couplings to electrons and nucleons slightly relaxes the constraint from supernova 1987A and enlarges viable parameter regions compared with the DFSZ models. It is shown that good global fits to the observational data are obtained for axion mass ranges of $0.45,mathrm{meV} lesssim m_a lesssim 30,mathrm{meV}$, and that the predicted parameter regions can be probed in the forthcoming helioscope searches.
Exotic Higgs decays are promising channels to discover new physics in the near future. We present a simple model with a new light scalar that couples to the Standard Model through a charged lepton-flavor violating interaction. This can yield exciting new signatures, such as $h to e^+ e^+ mu^-mu^-$, that currently have no dedicated searches at the Large Hadron Collider. We discuss this model in detail, assess sensitivity from flavor constraints, explore current constraints from existing multi-lepton searches, and construct a new search strategy to optimally target these exotic, lepton-flavor violating Higgs decays.
We discuss SUSY models in which renormalizable lepton number violating couplings hide the decay of the Higgs through h -> chi_1^0 + chi_1^0 followed by chi_1^0 -> tau + 2 jets or chi_1^0 -> u_tau + 2 jets and also explain neutrino masses. This mechanism can be made compatible with gauge mediated SUSY breaking.
In the simplest little Higgs model the new flavor-changing interactions between heavy neutrinos and the Standard Model leptons can generate contributions to some lepton flavor violating decays of $Z$-boson at one-loop level, such as $Z to tau^{pm}mu^{mp}$, $Zto tau^{pm}e^{mp}$, and $Z to mu^{pm}e^{mp}$. We examine the decay modes, and find that the branching ratios can reach $10^{-7}$ for the three decays, which should be accessible at the Giga$Z$ option of the ILC.
In general two Higgs doublet models (2HDMs) without scalar flavour changing neutral couplings (SFCNC) in the lepton sector, the electron, muon and tau interactions can be decoupled in a robust framework, stable under renormalization group evolution. In this framework, the breaking of lepton flavour universality (LFU) goes beyond the mass proportionality, opening the possibility to accommodate a different behaviour among charged leptons. We analyze the electron and muon $(g-2)$ anomalies in the context of these general flavour conserving models in the leptonic sector (g$ell$FC). We consider two different models, I-g$ell$FC and II-g$ell$FC, in which the quark Yukawa couplings coincide, respectively, with the ones in type I and in type II 2HDMs. We find two types of solutions that fully reproduce both $(g-2)$ anomalies, and which are compatible with experimental constraints from LEP and LHC, from LFU, from flavour and electroweak physics, and with theoretical constraints in the scalar sector. In the first type of solution, all the new scalars have masses in the 1--2.5 TeV range, the vacuum expectation values (vevs) of both doublets are quite similar in magnitude, and both anomalies are dominated by two loop Barr-Zee contributions. This solution appears in both models. In a second type of solution, one loop contributions are dominant in the muon anomaly, all new scalars have masses below 1 TeV, and the ratio of vevs is in the range 10--100. The second neutral scalar $H$ is the lighter among the new scalars, with a mass in the 210--390 GeV range while the pseudoscalar $A$ is the heavier, with a mass in the range 400--900 GeV. The new charged scalar $H^pm$ is almost degenerate either with the scalar or with the pseudoscalar. This second type of solution only appears in the I-g$ell$FC model. Both solutions require the soft breaking of the $mathbb{Z}_{2}$ symmetry of the Higgs potential.