Resolving the Flavor Structure in the MFV-SMEFT

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 the 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.