Search strategies for pair production of heavy Higgs bosons decaying invisibly at the LHC

2017/10/31 by Ernesto Arganda, E. Arganda, J. Lorenzo Díaz-Cruz +8 · 2 citations
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Biology #Boson #Computational Physics and Python Applications #Context (archaeology) #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Geometry #Higgs boson #Higgs sector #Large Hadron Collider #Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model #Nuclear physics #Pair production #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #Physics beyond the Standard Model #Pseudoscalar #Quark #Scalar (mathematics) #Standard Model (mathematical formulation) #hep-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.nuclphysb.2018.02.004

published as Nucl. Phys. B 929 (2018) 171-192 · 22 pages, 11 tables, 2 figures. This version v2 matches the manuscript published in NPB

openalex created_date 2017/11/10 · openalex publication_date 2018/02/09 · arxiv created 2018/03/07 · arxiv updated 2018/03/08 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

The search for heavy Higgs bosons at the LHC represents an intense experimental program, carried out by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations, which includes the hunt for invisible Higgs decays and dark matter candidates. No significant deviations from the SM backgrounds have been observed in any of these searches, imposing significant constraints on the parameter space of different new physics models with an extended Higgs sector. Here we discuss an alternative search strategy for heavy Higgs bosons decaying invisibly at the LHC, focusing on the pair production of a heavy scalar H together with a pseudoscalar A, through the production mode q q → Z^∗ → HA. We identify as the most promising signal the final state made up of 4b + E_T^miss, coming from the heavy scalar decay mode H → hh → b b b b, with h being the discovered SM-like Higgs boson with m_h=125 GeV, together with the invisible channel of the pseudoscalar. We work within the context of simplified MSSM scenarios that contain quite heavy sfermions of most types with \cal O(10) TeV masses, while the stops are heavy enough to reproduce the 125 GeV mass for the lightest SM-like Higgs boson. By contrast, the gauginos/higgsinos and the heavy MSSM Higgs bosons have masses near the EW scale. Our search strategies, for a LHC center-of-mass energy of √(s) = 14 TeV, allow us to obtain statistical significances of the signal over the SM backgrounds with values up to ∼ 1.6σ and ∼ 3σ, for total integrated luminosities of 300 fb^-1 and 1000 fb^-1, respectively.

Citations

• Combined Measurement of the Higgs Boson Mass in pp Collisions at √(s)=7 and 8 TeV with the ATLAS and CMS Experiments
• Observation of a new particle in the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson with the ATLAS detector at the LHC
• Theory and phenomenology of two-Higgs-doublet models
• Search for Invisible Decays of a Higgs Boson Produced in Association with aZBoson in ATLAS
• Observation of a new boson at a mass of 125 GeV with the CMS experiment at the LHC
• Higgs Boson Production and Decay at Hadron Colliders

Cited by

• Deep Learning to Improve the Sensitivity of Higgs Pair Searches in the 4b Channel at the LHC
• Higgs boson potential at colliders: Status and perspectives

Related

• Discovering extra Higgs boson via pair production of the SM-like Higgs bosons
• The Hunt for the Rest of the Higgs Bosons
• Prospects on the search for invisible Higgs decays in the ZH channel at the LHC and HL-LHC: A Snowmass White Paper
• Heavy Higgs Bosons at the LHC Upgrade
• Search for heavy Higgs bosons decaying to a top quark pair in proton-proton collisions at √(s) = 13 TeV