Evidence of off-shell Higgs boson production from ZZ leptonic decay channels and constraints on its total width with the ATLAS detector

Summary, in English

This Letter reports on a search for off-shell production of the Higgs boson using 139 fb−1 of pp collision data at s= 13 TeV collected by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The signature is a pair of Z bosons, with contributions from both the production and subsequent decay of a virtual Higgs boson and the interference of that process with other processes. The two observable final states are ZZ→4ℓ and ZZ→2ℓ2ν with ℓ=e or μ. In the ZZ→4ℓ final state, a dense Neural Network is used to enhance analysis sensitivity with respect to matrix element-based discrimination. The background-only hypothesis is rejected with an observed (expected) significance of 3.3 (2.2) standard deviations, representing experimental evidence for off-shell Higgs boson production. Assuming that no new particles enter the production of the virtual Higgs boson, its total width can be deduced from the measurement of its off-shell production cross-section. The measured total width of the Higgs boson is 4.5−2.5+3.3 MeV, and the observed (expected) upper limit on the total width is found to be 10.5 (10.9) MeV at 95% confidence level. © 2023 The Author(s)

• Author: G. Aad; T.P.A. Åkesson; C. Doglioni; P.A. Ekman; V. Hedberg; H. Herde; B. Konya; E. Lytken; R. Poettgen; N.D. Simpson; E. Skorda; O. Smirnova; L. Zwalinski
• Department/s: Particle and nuclear physics; eSSENCE: The e-Science Collaboration
• Publishing year: 2023
• Language: English
• Publication/Series: Physics Letters, Section B: Nuclear, Elementary Particle and High-Energy Physics
• Volume: 846
• Links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2023.138223
• Document type: Journal article
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Topic: Subatomic Physics
• Status: Published
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 0370-2693