Weak magnetic dipole moments in two-Higgs-doublet models

Abstract

We investigate the effects of the new scalars in a two-Higgs-doublet model on the weak magnetic dipole moments of the fermions at the $Z$ peak. Proportionality of the Yukawa couplings to the fermion masses, and to $\tanβ$, makes such effects more important for the third family, and potentially relevant. For the $τ$ lepton, the new diagrams are suppressed by $v_τ= 2 \sin^2 θ_W - 1/2$, or by powers of $m_τ/M_Z$, but may still be comparable to the SM electroweak contributions. In contrast, we find that the new contributions for the bottom quark may be much larger than the SM electroweak contributions. These new effects may even compete with the gluonic contribution, if the extra scalars are light and $\tan β$ is large. We also comment on the problem of the gauge dependence of the vertex, arising when the $Z$ is off mass shell. We compute the contributions from the new scalars to the magnetic dipole moments for top-quark production at the NLC, and for bottom and $ τ$ production at LEP2. In the case of the top, we find that the SM electroweak and gluonic contributions to the $Z t {\bar t}$ vertex are comparable. The new contributions may be of the same order of magnitude as the standard-model ones, but not much larger.