$h^0 \to c \bar{c}$ as a test case for quark flavor violation in the MSSM

Abstract

We compute the decay width of $h^0 \to c \bar{c}$ in the MSSM with quark flavor violation (QFV) at full one-loop level adopting the $\overline{\rm DR}$ renormalisation scheme. We study the effects of $\tilde{c}-\tilde{t}$ mixing, taking into account the constraints from the B meson data. We show that the full one-loop corrected decay width $\Gamma (h^0 \to c \bar{c})$ is very sensitive to the MSSM QFV parameters. In a scenario with large $\tilde{c}_{L,R}-\tilde{t}_{L,R}$ mixing $\Gamma (h^0 \to c \bar{c})$ can differ up to $\sim \pm 35\%$ from its SM value. After estimating the uncertainties of the width, we conclude that an observation of these SUSY QFV effects is possible at an $e^+ e^-$ collider (ILC).