New Higgs decays to axion-like particles

Biekötter, Anke; Chala, Mikael; Spannowsky, Michael

Abstract

We investigate the interactions of a light scalar with the Higgs boson and second-generation fermions, which trigger new rare decays of the Higgs boson into 4μ, 2μ2γ , 6μ and 4μ2 j. We recast current LHC searches to constrain these decays and develop new collider analyses for those channels which are only poorly tested by existing studies. With the currently collected data we can probe branching ratios as small as 1.5 × 10−5, 8.7 × 10−5, 5.7 × 10−8 and 1.6 × 10−7, respectively. For the High-Luminosity LHC run, considered here to involve 3 ab−1 of integrated luminosity, these numbers go down to 1.3 × 10−5, 2.0 × 10−6, 3.0 × 10−9 and 5.4 × 10−9, respectively. We also comment on other channels that remain still unexplored.

Citation

Biekötter, A., Chala, M., & Spannowsky, M. (2022). New Higgs decays to axion-like particles. Physics Letters B, 834, Article 137465. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2022.137465

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Sep 22, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Sep 29, 2022
• Publication Date: 2022
• Deposit Date: Feb 6, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 6, 2023
• Journal: Physics Letters B
• Print ISSN: 0370-2693
• Electronic ISSN: 1873-2445
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 834
• Article Number: 137465
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2022.137465
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1181700