Scalar-Mediated Flavor-Changing Neutral Currents

Abstract

The simplest extension of the standard model involves adding a scalar doublet--the so-called two-Higgs model. In general, the additional scalar will mediate tree-level flavor-changing neutral currents. Although one can arbitrarily impose a discrete symmetry to avoid these, it isn't necessary to do so; reasonable assumptions about the size of the flavor-changing couplings can make them sufficiently small as to avoid problems in the kaon sector. However, these same assumptions give much larger effects in the third-family case. We discuss the model, the "reasonable assumptions" on the size of the couplings, and examine phenomenological bounds on the couplings, showing that the most promising signatures are from $B_s --> \mu\tau$, $\mu --> e\gamma$, etc. We then include the newest result which shows potentially significant effects on the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon.