Uncovering the Charming Higgs at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper investigates the potential to detect a non-standard Higgs decay into charm quarks at the LHC using jet substructure techniques, highlighting a promising signal for certain mass ranges.

Contribution

It introduces a method to observe the charming Higgs model at the LHC, utilizing jet substructure to identify cascade decays into charm quarks, which evade previous bounds.

Findings

Potential 3.8 sigma significance at 30 fb^-1 for a 100 GeV Higgs

Achieves 5 sigma significance with 50 fb^-1 at 14 TeV

Demonstrates jet substructure as a key tool for new Higgs searches

Abstract

We study the observability of the Higgs boson in the "charming Higgs" model. In this model the Higgs boson primarily undergoes a cascade decay to four charm quarks via light intermediate pseudoscalars. Such a decay allows the Higgs boson to escape the most stringent LEP bounds on the Standard Model Higgs boson mass. If the light pseudoscalars are sufficiently light they become highly boosted and their decay products collimated into jets. We show that by using jet substructure techniques, this model is potentially observable at the LHC. For a Higgs boson mass of 100 GeV and light pseudoscalar mass of 12 GeV, we find a signal significance of 3.8 sigma with a luminosity of 30 fb^-1 and that a 5 sigma significance can be obtained with 50 fb^-1 of luminosity at the 14 TeV LHC.