Role of polarization in probing anomalous gauge interactions of the higgs boson

Abstract

We explore the use of polarized e⁺/e^- beams and/or the information on final state decay lepton polarizations in probing the interaction of the Higgs boson with a pair of vector bosons. A model independent analysis of the process e⁺e^-→ff^- H, where f is any light fermion, is carried out through the construction of observables having identical properties under the discrete symmetry transformations as different individual anomalous interactions. This allows us to probe an individual anomalous term independent of the others. We find that initial state beam polarization can significantly improve the sensitivity to CP-odd couplings of the Z boson with the Higgs boson (ZZH). Moreover, an ability to isolate events with a particular τ helicity, with even 40% efficiency, can improve sensitivities to certain ZZH couplings by as much as a factor of 3. In addition, the contamination from the ZZH vertex contributions present in the measurement of the trilinear Higgs-W (WWH) couplings can be reduced to a great extent by employing polarized beams. The effects of initial state radiation and beamstrahlung, which can be relevant for higher values of the beam energy are also included in the analysis.