Search for the Higgs boson produced in association with a W boson and decaying to four b-quarks via two spin-zero particles in pp collisions at 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Summary, in English

This paper presents a dedicated search for exotic decays of the Higgs boson to a pair of new spin-zero particles, H→ aa, where the particle a decays to b-quarks and has a mass in the range of 20–60 GeV. The search is performed in events where the Higgs boson is produced in association with a W boson, giving rise to a signature of a lepton (electron or muon), missing transverse momentum, and multiple jets from b-quark decays. The analysis is based on the full dataset of pp collisions at s=13TeV recorded in 2015 by the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3.2 fb-1. No significant excess of events above the Standard Model prediction is observed, and a 95% confidence-level upper limit is derived for the product of the production cross section for pp→ WH times the branching ratio for the decay H→ aa→ 4 b. The upper limit ranges from 6.2 pb for an a-boson mass ma=20GeV to 1.5 pb for ma=60GeV. © 2016, CERN for the benefit of the ATLAS collaboration.

• Author: M Aaboud; G Aad; B. Abbott; J Abdallah; O Abdinov; B Abeloos; Torsten Åkesson; Simona Bocchetta; LENE BRYNGEMARK; Caterina Doglioni; Anders Floderus; Vincent Hedberg; Göran Jarlskog; Else Lytken; Ulf Mjörnmark; Oxana Smirnova; Oleksandr Viazlo
• Department/s: Particle and nuclear physics; eSSENCE: The e-Science Collaboration
• Publishing year: 2016
• Language: English
• Publication/Series: European Physical Journal C
• Volume: 76
• Issue: 11
• Links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-016-4418-9
• Document type: Journal article
• Publisher: Springer
• Topic: Subatomic Physics
• Status: Published
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 1434-6044