9th General Meeting of the LHC EFT Working Group

Double Higgs Production via Vector Boson Fusion in SMEFT

Not scheduled

20m

4/3-006 - TH Conference Room (CERN)

Speaker

Michal Jakub Ryczkowski (Università di Padova and INFN, Sezione di Padova)

Description

Double Higgs production via vector boson fusion (VBF), though suppressed compared to the gluon fusion channel, provides a sensitive probe of electroweak symmetry breaking and possible BSM dynamics. We investigate the effects of dimension-6 and dimension-8 SMEFT operators—particularly those involving derivative interactions—on this process. Using global-fit constraints, and taking into account perturbative unitarity and EFT validity bounds, we estimate the maximal enhancements for the HL-LHC experiment. While typically modest, in certain scenarios dominated by derivative operators, the VBF channel can exhibit energy-growing effects and become competitive with gluon fusion, offering a complementary window on anomalous Higgs couplings and their impact on BSM physics.