Extremal Higgs couplings
Joan Elias Miró (The Abdus Salam ICTP, Strada Costiera 11, 34135 Trieste, Italy); Andrea L. Guerrieri (Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Universita degli Studi di Padova, Italy; Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Padova, via Marzolo 8, 35131 Padova, Italy and Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 2Y5, Canada); Mehmet Asım Gümüş (SISSA, Via Bonomea 265, I-34136 Trieste, Italy INFN, Sezione di Trieste, Via Valerio 2, 34127 Trieste, Italy)
We critically assess to what extent it makes sense to bound the Wilson coefficients of dimension-six operators. In the context of Higgs physics, we establish that a closely related observable, , is well defined and satisfies a two-sided bound. is derived from the low momentum expansion of the scattering amplitude, or the derivative of the amplitude at the origin with respect to the Mandelstam variable , expressed as where represents all Standard Model couplings. This observable is nondispersive and, as a result, not sign-definite. We also determine the conditions under which the bound on is equivalent to a bound on the dimension-six operator .