Resolving the flavor structure in the MFV-SMEFT

Abstract

Abstract We constrain the flavor structure of Wilson coefficients in the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT) from data. In the SMEFT, new physics effects in couplings of up-type and down-type quarks are related through the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa mixing matrix. We exploit this relation to pin down potential new sources of flavor symmetry breaking in a global analysis of high- and low-energy data from the LHC, LEP, and b factory experiments. We demonstrate the power of such an analysis by performing a combined fit of effective four-quark and two-quark couplings contributing to a large set of flavor, top-quark, electroweak, and dijet observables. All four sectors are needed to fully resolve the flavor structure of left-chiral four-quark couplings without leaving blind directions in the parameter space. Although we work in the framework of minimal flavor violation, our strategy applies as well to other flavor patterns, like U(2) flavor symmetry or leptoquark scenarios.