Searches for the exclusive decays of the Higgs boson into $D^*\gamma$ and of the $Z$ boson into $D^0\gamma$ and $K^0_s\gamma$ can probe flavour-violating Higgs and $Z$ boson couplings to light quarks. Searches for these decays are performed with a $pp$ collision data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of $136.3$ fb$^{-1}$ collected at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV between 2016-2018 with the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. In the $D^*\gamma$ and $D^0\gamma$ channels, the observed (expected) 95$\%$ confidence-level upper limits on the respective branching fractions are ${\cal B}(H\rightarrow D^*\gamma)< 1.0 (1.2)\times 10^{-3}$, ${\cal B}(Z\rightarrow D^0\gamma)< 4.0 (3.4)\times 10^{-6}$, while the corresponding results in the $K^0_s\gamma$ channel are ${\cal B}(Z\rightarrow K^0_s\gamma)< 3.1 (3.0)\times 10^{-6}$.
Numbers of observed and expected background events for the $m_{\mathcal{M}\gamma}$ ranges of interest. Each expected background and the corresponding uncertainty is obtained by integrating the total pdf after a background-only fit to the data, where the uncertainty does not take into account statistical fluctuations in each mass range. Expected Higgs and $Z$ boson signal contributions, with their corresponding total systematic uncertainty, are shown for reference branching fractions of $10^{-3}$ and $10^{-6}$, respectively. Entries are marked with a dash when there is no signal of that type in the specified range.
Observed and expected (with the corresponding $\pm1\sigma$ intervals) 95% CL upper limits on the branching fractions for $H\rightarrow D^*\gamma$, $Z\rightarrow D^0\gamma$ and $Z\rightarrow K^0_s\gamma$. Standard Model production of the Higgs boson is assumed. The corresponding upper limits on the production cross-section times branching fraction $\sigma\times\mathcal{B}$ are also shown.
Searches for the exclusive decays of the Higgs boson to an $\omega$ meson and a photon or a $K^{*}$ meson and a photon can probe flavour-conserving and flavour-violating Higgs boson couplings to light quarks, respectively. Searches for these decays, along with the analogous $Z$ boson decay to an $\omega$ meson and a photon, are performed with a $pp$ collision data sample corresponding to integrated luminosities of up to 134 fb$^{-1}$ collected at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV with the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The obtained 95% confidence-level upper limits on the respective branching fractions are ${\cal B}(H\rightarrow\omega\gamma)< 5.5\times 10^{-4}$, ${\cal B}(H\rightarrow K^{*}\gamma)< 2.2\times10^{-4}$ and ${\cal B}(Z\rightarrow \omega\gamma)<3.9\times 10^{-6}$. The limits for $H\rightarrow \omega\gamma$ and $Z\rightarrow \omega\gamma$ are 370 times and 140 times the Standard Model expected values, respectively. The result for $Z\rightarrow \omega\gamma$ corresponds to a two-orders-of-magnitude improvement over the limit obtained by the DELPHI experiment at LEP.
Numbers of observed and expected background events for the $m_{\mathcal{M}\gamma}$ ranges of interest. Each expected background and the corresponding uncertainty of its mean is obtained from a background-only fit to the data; the uncertainty does not take into account statistical fluctuations in each mass range. Expected $Z$ and Higgs boson signal contributions, with their corresponding total systematic uncertainty, are shown for reference branching fractions of $10^{-6}$ and $10^{-4}$, respectively.
Expected and observed branching fraction limits at the 95% CL for $H/Z\rightarrow \omega\gamma$ and $H\rightarrow K^{*}\gamma$.
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