Prospects for extra Higgs boson search via pp→H,A→τμ,ττ at the high luminosity Large Hadron Collider

• Published in: The European physical journal. C, Particles and fields Vol. 83; no. 12; p. 1112
• Main Authors: Hou, Wei-Shu, Jain, Rishabh, Kao, Chung
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.12.2023; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Astronomy; Astrophysics and Cosmology; Couplings; Elementary Particles; Flavor (particle physics); Gluons; Hadrons; Heavy Ions; Higgs bosons; Large Hadron Collider; Luminosity; Measurement Science and Instrumentation; Nuclear Energy; Nuclear Physics; Partons; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Quantum Field Theories; Quantum Field Theory; Quarks; Regular Article - Theoretical Physics; Solenoids; String Theory
• ISSN: 1434-6044; 1434-6052
• DOI: 10.1140/epjc/s10052-023-12277-1

We extend heavy Higgs searches at the Large Hadron Collider for H → τ μ by CMS, and H → τ τ by ATLAS and CMS, to study discovery prospects of extra Higgs states in p p → H , A → τ μ , τ τ with and final states, where j τ = π , ρ , a 1 and is missing transverse energy. In a general two Higgs doublet model without Z 2 symmetry, extra Yukawa couplings ρ τ τ and ρ τ μ can drive H , A → τ τ and τ μ channels at hadron colliders, following gluon–gluon fusion production with extra ρ tt couplings. The light Higgs boson h (125) is found to resemble closely the Standard Model Higgs boson; in the alignment limit of cos γ → 0 for h – H mixing, flavor changing neutral Higgs couplings such as h → τ μ are naturally suppressed, but the couplings of the heavier H is optimized by sin γ → 1 . We define various signal regions for H , A → τ μ and τ τ and evaluate physics backgrounds from dominant processes with realistic acceptance cuts and tagging efficiencies. Two different studies are presented. We first perform a parton level study without any hadronization and with minimal detector smearing. We then include hadronization using PYTHIA 8.2 and fast detector simulation using DELPHES to give event level simulation. Results for s = 13 TeV appear promising, which we extend further to s = 14 TeV for the High Luminosity LHC.