h-> mu^+ mu^- via tth Production at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper investigates the potential to detect a light Higgs boson decaying to muons via t t-bar production at the LHC, showing comparable significance to other channels and estimating the required cross-section enhancement for discovery.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the t t-bar associated Higgs production channel for muon decay, highlighting its viability and complementarity with other detection methods.

Findings

Significance for Higgs discovery in this channel is comparable to other methods.

Combining multiple channels can achieve 3 sigma evidence with 300 fb^{-1}.

Estimated cross-section enhancement needed for non-standard Higgs detection.

Abstract

In this work, we examine the process at the LHC in which a Higgs boson is produced in association with a t t-bar pair and subsequently decays to a pair of muons. We show that the statistical significance for the discovery of a light, Standard-Model Higgs boson with a mass around 120 GeV in this channel is comparable to those for other processes (gluon fusion, weak-boson fusion) in which the Higgs decays to a muon pair. Combining all three of these channels, we show that evidence for a Higgs boson with a mass in the range 115 GeV < m_h < 130 GeV could be obtained at the 3 sigma significance level with an integrated luminosity of 300 fb^{-1}. We also calculate the enhancement factor to the cross-section that would be needed to discover a non-standard Higgs boson in this channel.