Anomalous gauge interactions of the Higgs boson: precision constraints and weak boson scatterings

Interaction of Higgs scalar (H) with weak gauge bosons (V=W±,Z0) is the key to understand electroweak symmetry breaking (EWSB) mechanism. New physics effects in the HVV interactions, as predicted by models of compositeness, supersymmetry and extra dimensions, can be formulated as anomalous couplings via a generic effective Lagrangian. We first show that the existing electroweak precision data already impose nontrivial indirect constraints on the anomalous HVV couplings. Then, we systematically study VV→VV scatterings in the TeV region, via Gold-plated pure leptonic decay modes of the weak bosons. We demonstrate that, even for a light Higgs boson in the mass range 115 GeV≲mH≲300 GeV, this process can directly probe the anomalous HVV interactions at the LHC with an integrated luminosity of 300 fb−1, which further supports the “no-lose” theorem for the LHC to uncover the EWSB mechanism. Comparisons with the constraints from measuring the cross section of VH associate production and the Higgs boson decay width are also presented.