We consider the 2 Higgs doublet model (2HDM) and compare two effective field theory (EFT) approaches to it, according to whether the heavy degrees of freedom are integrated out before [standard model EFT (SMEFT)] or after [Higgs EFT (HEFT)] spontaneous symmetry breaking. By requiring decoupling and perturbativity in the 2HDM, we define a consistent EFT expansion in inverse powers of the heavy masses which is applied to both the SMEFT and the HEFT tree-level matchings to the 2HDM. We organize this expansion with a dimensionless parameter $\xi$, and investigate the tree-level scatterings $hh\to hh$ and $WW\to hh$ up to $\mathcal{O}({\xi }^2)$. We find no differences between the HEFT and the SMEFT approaches at this order. We show scenarios where even including dimension-8 operators of the SMEFT is insufficient to obtain an accurate matching to the 2HDM.

• Received 22 May 2023
• Accepted 8 September 2023

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.108.055034

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP³.

Published by the American Physical Society