CP Asymmetries in Higgs decays to ZZ at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper investigates how asymmetries in Higgs decays to ZZ at the LHC can reveal potential deviations in the HZZ coupling, highlighting asymmetries as the most effective method for testing new physics.

Contribution

It introduces asymmetry-based methods for probing general HZZ couplings and demonstrates their effectiveness over other approaches in testing for additional couplings.

Findings

Asymmetries provide a definitive test for additional HZZ couplings.

Measurement of asymmetries can yield significant sensitivity to new physics.

Other methods like partial width and threshold scans are less conclusive.

Abstract

We examine the effect of a general HZZ coupling through a study of the Higgs decay to leptons via Z bosons at the LHC. We discuss various methods for placing limits on additional couplings, including measurement of the partial width, threshold scans, and asymmetries constructed from angular observables. We find that only the asymmetries provide a definitive test of additional couplings. We further estimate the significances they provide.