Decay of the Higgs boson to longitudinally polarized leptons and quarks

Abstract

An important problem in the particle physics is interaction of the Higgs boson with the fermions. It is in the processes, which involve $h f f $ interaction, the manifestations of $CP$ violation are possible. This in turn can be helpful in solving the problem of the dominance of matter over antimatter in the Universe. In this connection, in the present paper, the effect of longitudinal polarization of leptons and quarks produced in the decay of the Higgs boson is investigated and calculated. We consider the case in which the Higgs boson interacts with fermions via a mixture of scalar and pseudoscalar couplings. Under this assumption, the longitudinal polarization can acquire non-zero values due to imaginary part of loop corrections to tree-level amplitudes. This polarization is a direct signature of the $CP$ violation in the Higgs sector. Effects of the longitudinal polarization of $\tau$ leptons on the energy distribution of the pions in the two-step Higgs-boson decay $h \to \tau^- \tau^+ \to \pi^- \nu_\tau \pi^+ \bar{\nu}_\tau$ are also studied, and the energy asymmetry with corresponding moments are calculated.