Search for heavy resonances decaying to a pair of Lorentz-boosted Higgs bosons in final states with leptons and a bottom quark pair at s $$ \sqrt{s} $$ = 13 TeV

Abstract A search for new heavy resonances decaying to a pair of Higgs bosons (HH) in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV is presented. Data were collected with the CMS detector at the LHC in 2016–2018, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb −1. Resonances with a mass between 0.8 and 4.5 TeV are considered using events in which one Higgs boson decays into a bottom quark pair and the other into final states with either one or two charged leptons. Specifically, the single-lepton decay channel HH → b b ¯ WW ∗ → b b ¯ ℓ v q q ¯ ′ $$ \mathrm{HH}\to \mathrm{b}\overline{\mathrm{b}}{\mathrm{WW}}^{\ast}\to \mathrm{b}\overline{\mathrm{b}}\ell v\mathrm{q}{\overline{\mathrm{q}}}^{\prime } $$ and the dilepton decay channels HH → b b ¯ WW ∗ → b b ¯ ℓ v ℓ v $$ \mathrm{HH}\to \mathrm{b}\overline{\mathrm{b}}{\mathrm{WW}}^{\ast}\to \mathrm{b}\overline{\mathrm{b}}\ell v\ell v $$ and HH → b b ¯ ττ → b b ¯ ℓ vv ℓ vv $$ \mathrm{HH}\to \mathrm{b}\overline{\mathrm{b}}\uptau \uptau \to \mathrm{b}\overline{\mathrm{b}}\ell vv\ell vv $$ are examined, where ℓ in the final state corresponds to an electron or muon. The signal is extracted using a two-dimensional maximum likelihood fit of the H → b b ¯ $$ \mathrm{H}\to \mathrm{b}\overline{\mathrm{b}} $$ jet mass and HH invariant mass distributions. No significant excess above the standard model expectation is observed in data. Model-independent exclusion limits are placed on the product of the cross section and branching fraction for narrow spin-0 and spin-2 massive bosons decaying to HH. The results are also interpreted in the context of radion and bulk graviton production in models with a warped extra spatial dimension. The results provide the most stringent limits to date for X → HH signatures with final-state leptons and at some masses provide the most sensitive limits of all X → HH searches.

Abstract licence: CC BY

A person counts once a day per paper. We keep no cookie and no address: a reader is a hash that changes every day. Any month under five reads shows no number.