Determining the top-antitop and $ZZ$ Couplings of a Neutral Higgs Boson of Arbitrary CP Nature at the NLC

Abstract

The optimal procedure for extracting the coefficients of different components of a cross section which takes the form of unknown coefficients times functions of known kinematical form is developed. When applied to $\epem\to t\anti t+$Higgs production at $\rts=1\tev$ and integrated luminosity of $200\fbi$, we find that the $t\anti t\to$Higgs CP-even and CP-odd couplings and, to a lesser extent, the $ZZ\to$Higgs (CP-even) coupling can be extracted with reasonable errors, assuming the Higgs sector parameter choices yield a significant production rate. Indeed, the composition of a mixed-CP Higgs eigenstate can be determined with sufficient accuracy that a SM-like CP-even Higgs boson can be distinguished from a purely CP-odd Higgs boson at a high level of statistical significance, and vice versa.