Multiparticle Higgs and Vector Boson Amplitudes at Threshold

Abstract

In a spontaneously broken gauge theory we consider (sub)-processes in which one virtual intermediate state (it can be a Higgs or a gauge field) produces many on-shell Higgses and massive vector bosons. In the kinematic regime where all final states are produced on their mass threshold, we show how to compute iteratively all tree-level amplitudes ${\cal A}_{1\to n+m}$ involving an arbitrary number $n$ of Higgs bosons and $m$ of longitudinal vector bosons in the final state, and list the amplitudes coefficients for up to $n=32$ and $m=32$. We find that these amplitudes exhibit factorial growth not only in the number of scalar fields, but also in the number of longitudinal gauge fields, ${\cal A}_{1\to n+m} \sim n! \,m!$. This growth is not expected to disappear at loop-level in the fixed-order perturbation theory. We conclude that at energies accessible at the next generation of hadron colliders, such as the 50-100 TeV FCC, where $\sqrt{\hat{s}}$ is sufficient to produce $\gg 1/\alpha_W$ of $W,Z$ and $H$, perturbation theory breaks down when applied to the multiparticle electroweak production, at least near the kinematic multiparticle mass threshold where the electroweak gauge-Higgs sector becomes strongly coupled.