Charming the Higgs
Résumé
We show that current Higgs data permit a significantly enhanced Higgs
coupling to charm pairs, comparable to the Higgs to bottom pairs coupling in
the Standard Model, without resorting to additional new physics sources in
Higgs production. With a mild level of the latter current data even allow for
the Higgs to charm pairs to be the dominant decay channel. An immediate
consequence of such a large charm coupling is a significant reduction of the
Higgs signal strengths into the known final states as in particular into bottom
pairs. This might reduce the visible vector-boson associated Higgs production
rate to a level that could compromise the prospects of ever observing it. We
however demonstrate that a significant fraction of this reduced signal can be
recovered by jet-flavor-tagging targeted towards charm-flavored jets. Finally
we argue that an enhanced Higgs to charm pairs coupling can be obtained in
various new physics scenarios in the presence of only a mild accidental
cancellation between various contributions.