Electroweak corrections to the fermionic decay width of the standard Higgs boson

Abstract

The partial decay width of the standard model Higgs particle into a general species of fermions$H \to f\bar f$ is given at the electroweak 1-loop level. The analytic formulae are applicable to light and heavy fermions. Numerical results are presented for Higgs decays intob andt quarks and into charged leptons. For not too heavy Higgs bosons the radiative corrections are of the order of a few per cent. In particular for Higgs bosons below theW ⁺ W ⁻ threshold the correction to the partial width intob quarks is very small and insensitive to the top mass. For every heavy Higgs bosons the 1-loop corrections increase the fermionic decay widths for all channels up to 15%.