Telling the spin of the "Higgs boson" at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper proposes a method to determine the spin of the Higgs boson at the LHC using asymmetries in decay channels, analyzing background effects and estimating the required data volume for spin discrimination.

Contribution

It introduces a new search strategy based on asymmetries in decay channels to determine the Higgs boson spin at the LHC, considering various masses and backgrounds.

Findings

Discrimination between spins requires 40 to 250 fb^{-1} of data.

Asymmetries in decay channels can effectively distinguish Higgs spin.

Analysis includes background effects for realistic assessment.

Abstract

We assume that the Higgs boson or a possible resonance---playing its role in strongly interacting models of electroweak symmetry breaking---has been discovered at the LHC and propose a search strategy to determine its spin based on two simple asymmetries in the ZZ, W+W- and t t-bar decays channels. We consider some benchmark values for its mass (in the interval from 182 GeV/c^2 to 1 TeV/c^2) and discuss the relative advantages of the different decay processes. A full analysis, including the background, is given. For a center-of-mass energy of 14 TeV, we find that the lowest integrated luminosity required to discriminate between the different spins is, depending on the process and the resonance mass, between 40 fb^{-1} and 250 fb^{-1}.