Search for the associated production of charm quarks and a Higgs boson decaying into a photon pair with the ATLAS detector

Summary, in English

A search for the production of a Higgs boson and one or more charm quarks, in which the Higgs boson decays into a photon pair, is presented. This search uses proton-proton collision data with a centre-of-mass energy of s = 13 TeV and an integrated luminosity of 140 fb−1 recorded by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The analysis relies on the identification of charm-quark-containing jets, and adopts an approach based on Gaussian process regression to model the non-resonant di-photon background. The observed (expected, assuming the Standard Model signal) upper limit at the 95% confidence level on the cross-section for producing a Higgs boson and at least one charm-quark-containing jet that passes a fiducial selection is found to be 10.6 pb (8.8 pb). The observed (expected) measured cross-section for this process is 5.3 ± 3.2 pb (2.9 ± 3.1 pb). © The Author(s) 2025.

• Author: G. Aad; T.P.A. Åkesson; K.S.V. Astrand; C. Doglioni; P.A. Ekman; V. Hedberg; H. Herde; B. Konya; E. Lytken; R. Poettgen; N.D. Simpson; O. Smirnova; E.J. Wallin; L. Zwalinski
• Department/s: Particle and nuclear physics; eSSENCE: The e-Science Collaboration; Department of Physics
• Publishing year: 2025
• Language: English
• Publication/Series: Journal of High Energy Physics
• Volume: 2025
• Issue: 2
• Links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/JHEP02(2025)045
• Document type: Journal article
• Publisher: Springer
• Topic: Subatomic Physics
• Keywords: Hadron-Hadron Scattering; Higgs Physics
• Status: Published
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 1029-8479