Signals of new heavy scalars in the flavor-aligned 2HDM

Abstract:
Searches for new neutral Higgs bosons of an extended Higgs sector at the LHC can be interpreted in the framework of the two-Higgs doublet model. By employing generic flavor-aligned Higgs?fermion Yukawa couplings, we propose an analysis that uses experimental data to determine whether flavor alignment is a consequence of a symmetry that is either exact or at most softly broken. Our proposal is illustrated in two different scenarios based on a few 3 sigma (local) excesses observed by the ATLAS and CMS Collaborations in their searches for heavy scalars at Run 2 of the LHC.