Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2015 / iii / Paper 47 / 4 / b

Allowed via a charged-current weak decay. The quark emits a virtual $W^{-}$ in $b\to u{W}^{-\ast }$, followed by $W^{-\ast }\to e^{-}{\bar{\nu }}_e$. The relevant terms are the quark and lepton weak charged currents, with amplitude proportional to the CKM matrix element $V_{ub}$. At low energy their product gives a four-fermion interaction of the form $({\bar{u}}_L{\gamma }^{\mu }{b}_L)({\bar{e}}_L{\gamma }_{\mu }{\nu }_{eL})$ plus its conjugate.

Allowed through second-order weak interactions, not a tree-level neutral-current vertex. This is the flavour-changing transition responsible for neutral kaon mixing, with change of strangeness by two. Box Feynman diagrams contain two W bosons and internal up-type quarks. Their vertices come from the weak charged current and contain CKM matrix factors. At low energy they generate an operator $({\bar{s}}_L{\gamma }_{\mu }{d}_L)({\bar{s}}_L{\gamma }^{\mu }{d}_L)$ plus its conjugate. The GIM mechanism cancels the flavour-independent part of the internal-quark sum; unequal quark masses leave a nonzero loop amplitude.

The coupling is allowed, with an on-shell threshold condition. The Higgs field kinetic term producesand hence a tree-level Feynman vertex. A decay into two real W bosons requires $m_h>2m_W$ for nonzero phase space. Below that threshold the vertex still mediates $h\to W{W}^{\ast }$ or decays through two virtual bosons into fermions. Thus an allowed Lagrangian coupling does not by itself guarantee an on-shell two-body decay.

Absent in the minimal Standard Model. The single charged-lepton Yukawa matrix supplies both the fermion mass matrix and the Higgs coupling, so the same left/right rotations diagonalize both. There is no off-diagonal $h\tau \mu$ vertex. With massless neutrinos, the separate charged-lepton family numbers prevent this transition perturbatively. If neutrino masses and mixing are added, loop-induced charged-lepton flavour violation can occur but is extremely suppressed; a sizeable rate would require an additional source of flavour violation. Part (c) provides one such source.