Unveiling Light-Quark Yukawa Flavor Structure via Dihadron Fragmentation at Lepton Colliders

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Authors: Qing-Hong Cao, Xin-Kai Wen, Bin Yan, Shu-Tao Zhang
Cited by: 1
References: 69

Abstract

Directly probing light-quark Yukawa couplings and their flavor structure remains a major challenge due to their smallness and overwhelming QCD backgrounds. In this Letter, we propose a theoretical framework to access these couplings at lepton colliders through transverse spin dependent azimuthal modulations in dihadron fragmentation. These modulations arise from the interference between Higgs mediated and standard model amplitudes in e^{-}e^{+}→qq[over ¯]Z, producing angular structures that are linearly sensitive to the Yukawa couplings y_{q}, in contrast to conventional observables that scale as y_{q}^{2}. By combining channels with an identified accompanying single hadron, h^{'}=π^{±},K^{±}, and p/p[over ¯], this approach cleanly disentangles the up- and down-quark Yukawa contributions, yielding typical limits at the O(10^{-4}-10^{-3}) level and establishing fragmentation dynamics as a novel and complementary probe of the Higgs flavor structure.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies Computational Physics and Python Applications Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions

Publication details

Journal / source
Physical Review Letters
Publisher
American Physical Society (APS)
Volume
136
Issue
23
Pages
231901–231901
Publication date
14 May 2026
Language
EN