Softened Symmetry Breaking in Composite Higgs Models.

We propose a new way of breaking the Goldstone symmetry in composite Higgs models, restoring the global symmetry in the mixings between the elementary and composite fermions by completing the former to full representations of this symmetry. The Goldstone symmetry is in turn broken softly by vectorlike mass terms in the elementary sector only. The resulting softened explicit breaking allows for a light Higgs boson, as found at the LHC, and a heavy top quark, without the need of light top partners around the Goldstone scale f∼TeV≪m_{comp}.

Lepton Flavor and Nonuniversality from Minimal Composite Higgs Setups.

We present a new class of models of lepton flavor in the composite Higgs framework. Following the concept of minimality, they lead to a rich phenomenology in good agreement with the current experimental picture. Because of a unification of the right-handed leptons, our scenario is very predictive and can naturally lead to a violation of lepton-flavor universality in neutral current interactions.

Probing the Charm Quark Yukawa Coupling in Higgs+Charm Production.

We propose a new method for determining the coupling of the Higgs boson to charm quarks, via Higgs production in association with a charm-tagged jet: pp→hc. As a first estimate, we find that at the LHC with 3000 fb^{-1}, it should be possible to derive a constraint of order one, relative to the standard model (SM) value of the charm Yukawa coupling. As a by-product of this analysis, we present an estimate of the exclusive pp→hD^{(*)} electroweak cross section.

Indirect handle on the down-quark Yukawa coupling.

To measure the Yukawa couplings of the up and down quarks, Yu,d, seems to be far beyond the capabilities of current and (near) future experiments in particle physics. By performing a general analysis of the potential misalignment between quark masses and Yukawa couplings, we derive predictions for the magnitude of induced flavor-changing neutral currents (FCNCs), depending on the shift in the physical Yukawa coupling of first-generation quarks. We find that a change of more than 50% in Yd would generically result in ds transitions in conflict with kaon physics.