Search for an exotic decay of the Higgs boson to a pair of light pseudoscalars in the final state with two muons and two b quarks in pp collisions at 13 TeV

Creators: Sirunyan, A. M.; Anderson, D.; Bornheim, A.; Lawhorn, J. M.; Lu, N.; Newman, H. B.; Nguyen, T. Q.; Pata, J.; Spiropulu, M.; Vlimant, J. R.; Wilkinson, R.; Xie, S.; Zhang, Z.; Zhu, R. Y.; Dubinin, M.; CMS Collaboration

Abstract

A search for exotic decays of the Higgs boson to a pair of light pseudoscalar particles a_1 is performed under the hypothesis that one of the pseudoscalars decays to a pair of opposite sign muons and the other decays to bb. Such signatures are predicted in a number of extensions of the standard model (SM), including next-to-minimal supersymmetry and two-Higgs-doublet models with an additional scalar singlet. The results are based on a data set of proton-proton collisions corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb^(-1), accumulated with the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC in 2016 at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. No statistically significant excess is observed with respect to the SM backgrounds in the search region for pseudoscalar masses from 20 GeV to half of the Higgs boson mass. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set on the product of the production cross section and branching fraction, σ_hB(h→a_1a_1→μ^+μ^−bb), ranging from 5 to 33 fb, depending on the pseudoscalar mass. Corresponding limits on the branching fraction, assuming the SM prediction for σ_h, are (1–7)×10^(-4).

Additional Information

© 2019 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by SCOAP3. Received 15 December 2018; Received in revised form 2 May 2019; Accepted 11 June 2019; Available online 13 June 2019. 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: BMBWF and FWF (Austria); FNRS and FWO (Belgium); CNPq, CAPES, FAPERJ, FAPERGS, and FAPESP (Brazil); MES (Bulgaria); CERN; CAS, MOST, and NSFC (China); COLCIENCIAS (Colombia); MSES and CSF (Croatia); RPF (Cyprus); SENESCYT (Ecuador); 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); NKFIA (Hungary); DAE and DST (India); IPM (Iran); SFI (Ireland); INFN (Italy); MSIP and NRF (Republic of Korea); MES (Latvia); LAS (Lithuania); MOE and UM (Malaysia); BUAP, CINVESTAV, CONACYT, LNS, SEP, and UASLP-FAI (Mexico); MOS (Montenegro); MBIE (New Zealand); PAEC (Pakistan); MSHE and NSC (Poland); FCT (Portugal); JINR (Dubna); MON, ROSATOM, RAS, RFBR, and NRC KI (Russia); MESTD (Serbia); SEIDI, CPAN, PCTI, and FEDER (Spain); MoSTR (Sri Lanka); Swiss Funding Agencies (Switzerland); MST (Taipei); ThEPCenter, IPST, STAR, and NSTDA (Thailand); TÜBITAK 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 Horizon 2020 Grant, contract No. 675440 (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 F.R.S.-FNRS and FWO (Belgium) under the "Excellence of Science – EOS" – be.h project n. 30820817; the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MEYS) of the Czech Republic; the Lendület ("Momentum") Programme and the János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the New National Excellence Program ÚNKP, the NKFIA research grants 123842, 123959, 124845, 124850, and 125105 (Hungary); the Council of Science and Industrial Research, India; the HOMING PLUS programme of the Foundation for Polish Science, cofinanced from European Union, Regional Development Fund, the Mobility Plus programme of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, the National Science Center (Poland), contracts Harmonia 2014/14/M/ST2/00428, Opus 2014/13/B/ST2/02543, 2014/15/B/ST2/03998, and 2015/19/B/ST2/02861, Sonata-bis 2012/07/E/ST2/01406; the National Priorities Research Program by Qatar National Research Fund; the Programa Estatal de Fomento de la Investigación Científica y Técnica de Excelencia María de Maeztu, grant MDM-2015-0509 and the Programa Severo Ochoa del Principado de Asturias; the Thalis and Aristeia programmes cofinanced by EU-ESF and the Greek NSRF; the Rachadapisek Sompot Fund for Postdoctoral Fellowship, Chulalongkorn University and the Chulalongkorn Academic into Its 2nd Century Project Advancement Project (Thailand); the Welch Foundation, contract C-1845; and the Weston Havens Foundation (USA).

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