Charm physics confronts high-pT lepton tails

Abstract

We present a systematic survey of possible short-distance new-physics effects in (semi)leptonic charged- and neutral-current charmed meson decays. Using the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT) to analyze the most relevant experimental data at low and high energies, we demonstrate a striking complementarity between charm decays and high invariant mass lepton tails at the LHC. Interestingly enough, high-pT Drell-Yan data offer competitive constraints on most new physics scenarios. Furthermore, the full set of correlated constraints from K, π and τ decays imposed by SU(2)L gauge invariance is considered. The bounds from D(s) decays, high-pT lepton tails and SU(2)L relations chart the space of the SMEFT affecting semi(leptonic) charm flavor transitions.