Flavor violating signatures of lighter and heavier Higgs bosons within Two Higgs Doublet Model type III at the LHeC

Abstract

We analyze the prospects for observing the light and heavy CP-even neutral Higgs bosons (φ = h and H) in their decays into flavor violating bs channels (including charge conjugation) at the proposed Large Hadron electron Collider (LHeC), with √ s ≈ 1.3 TeV, in the framework of a 2-Higgs Doublet Model (2HDM) Type-III, assuming a four-zero texture in the Yukawa matrices and a general Higgs potential. We consider theoretically consistent scenarios in agreement with current experimental data from flavor and Higgs physics. We investigate the charged current production process νeφq in presence of flavor violating decays of the Higgs bosons, that lead to a 3-jets + E /T signature. We demand exactly two jets, one tagged b-jet and one light-flavor jet, all in the central rapidity region. The remaining jet (originated by the remnant quark q) is tagged in the forward or backward regions and this together with a central jet veto (not more than one light-flavor jet) are essential criterions to enhance the signal-to-background rates. We consider the most relevant Standard Model (SM) backgrounds, treating c-jets separately from light-flavor and gluon ones, while allowing for mis-tagging. We find that the SM-like Higgs boson, h, would be accessible within several parameter configurations of our model at approximately the 1-2σ level with 100 fb