Search for lepton-flavour-violating decays of the Higgs boson

Creators: Khachatryan, V.; Apresyan, A.; Bornheim, A.; Bunn, J.; Chen, Y.; Duarte, J.; Mott, A.; Newman, H. B.; Pena, C.; Pierini, M.; Spiropulu, M.; Vlimant, J. R.; Wilkinson, R.; Xie, S.; Zhu, R. Y.; Dubinin, M.; CMS Collaboration

Abstract

The first direct search for lepton-flavour-violating decays of the recently discovered Higgs boson (H) is described. The search is performed in the H→μτ_e and H→μτ_h channels, where τeτe and τ_h are tau leptons reconstructed in the electronic and hadronic decay channels, respectively. The data sample used in this search was collected in pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of √s = 8 TeV with the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 fb^(−1). The sensitivity of the search is an order of magnitude better than the existing indirect limits. A slight excess of signal events with a significance of 2.4 standard deviations is observed. The p-value of this excess at M_H=125 GeV is 0.010. The best fit branching fraction is (H→μτ)=(0.84_(−0.37)^(+0.39))%. A constraint on the branching fraction, B(H→μτ)<1.51% at 95% confidence level is set. This limit is subsequently used to constrain the μ–τ Yukawa couplings to be less than 3.6×10^(−3).

Additional Information

© 2015 CERN for the benefit of the CMS Collaboration. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Received 25 February 2015. Received in revised form 20 July 2015. Accepted 21 July 2015. Available online 26 July 2015. Editor: M. Doser. Funded by SCOAP3. We congratulate our colleagues in the CERN accelerator departments for the excellent performance of the LHC and thank the technical and administrative staffs at CERN and at other CMS institutes for their contributions to the success of the CMS effort. In addition, we gratefully acknowledge the computing centres and personnel of the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid for delivering so effectively the computing infrastructure essential to our analyses. Finally, we acknowledge the enduring support for the construction and operation of the LHC and the CMS detector provided by the following funding agencies: BMWFW and FWF (Austria); FNRS and FWO (Belgium); CNPq, CAPES, FAPERJ, and FAPESP (Brazil); MES (Bulgaria); CERN; CAS, MoST, and NSFC (China); COLCIENCIAS (Colombia); MSES and CSF (Croatia); RPF (Cyprus); MoER, ERC IUT and ERDF (Estonia); Academy of Finland, MEC, and HIP (Finland); CEA and CNRS/IN2P3 (France); BMBF, DFG, and HGF (Germany); GSRT (Greece); OTKA and NIH (Hungary); DAE and DST (India); IPM (Iran); SFI (Ireland); INFN (Italy); MSIP and NRF (Republic of Korea); LAS (Lithuania); MOE and UM (Malaysia); CINVESTAV, CONACYT, SEP, and UASLP-FAI (Mexico); MBIE (New Zealand); PAEC (Pakistan); MSHE and NSC (Poland); FCT (Portugal); JINR (Dubna); MON, RosAtom, RAS and RFBR (Russia); MESTD (Serbia); SEIDI and CPAN (Spain); Swiss Funding Agencies (Switzerland); MST (Taipei); ThEPCenter, IPST, STAR and NSTDA (Thailand); TUBITAK and TAEK (Turkey); NASU and SFFR (Ukraine); STFC (United Kingdom); DOE and NSF (USA). Individuals have received support from the Marie-Curie programme and the European Research Council and EPLANET (European Union); the Leventis Foundation; the A.P. Sloan Foundation; the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation; the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office; the Fonds pour la Formation à la Recherche dans l'Industrie et dans l'Agriculture (FRIA-Belgium); the Agentschap voor Innovatie door Wetenschap en Technologie (IWT-Belgium); the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MEYS) of the Czech Republic; the Council of Science and Industrial Research, India; the HOMING PLUS programme of Foundation for Polish Science, cofinanced from European Union, Regional Development Fund; the Compagnia di San Paolo (Torino); the Consorzio per la Fisica (Trieste); MIUR project 20108T4XTM (Italy); the Thalis and Aristeia programmes cofinanced by EU-ESF and the Greek NSRF; and the National Priorities Research Program by Qatar National Research Fund.

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