Associated Production of Non-Standard Higgs Bosons at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential to detect non-standard Higgs bosons decaying into four partons via scalar pairs at the LHC, focusing on high transverse momentum production with advanced subjet analysis techniques.

Contribution

It demonstrates the feasibility of identifying non-standard Higgs bosons with specific decay modes using subjet analysis at high transverse momentum.

Findings

Light scalar Higgs bosons below 30 GeV could be detected with 100 fb^-1 of data.

Detection of heavier scalar Higgs depends on decay to b quarks dominating.

Subjet analysis effectively discriminates signal from background.

Abstract

We discuss the feasibility of seeing a Higgs boson which decays to four partons through a pair of (pseudo-)scalars at the LHC. We restrict our search to Higgs bosons produced in association with a W/Z boson at high transverse momentum. We argue that subjet analysis techniques are a good discriminant between such events and W/Z plus jets and top-antitop production. For light scalar masses (below 30 GeV), we find evidence that a flavor-independent search for such a non-standard Higgs boson is plausible with 100 fb^-1 of data, while a Higgs decaying to heavier scalars is only likely to be visible in models where scalar decays to b quarks dominate.