Associated Higgs plus vector boson test of a fermiophobic Higgs boson

TL;DR

This paper investigates the potential to distinguish a fermiophobic Higgs boson from the standard model Higgs using associated production with vector bosons and decay into photons, analyzing LHC data at 7 and 8 TeV.

Contribution

It demonstrates that existing and future LHC data can potentially identify a fermiophobic Higgs boson through specific production and decay channels, with estimated significance levels.

Findings

7 TeV data may distinguish at 1.9 sigma significance

8 TeV data could reach 2.8 sigma significance

Simulation shows the viability of the proposed method

Abstract

Production in association with an electroweak vector boson V is a distinctive mode of production for a Higgs boson H without tree-level couplings to fermions, known as a fermiophobic Higgs boson. We focus on HV associated production with H decay into a pair of photons, and V into a pair of jets, with the goal of distinguishing a fermiophobic Higgs boson from the standard model Higgs boson. Performing a simulation of the signal and pertinent QCD backgrounds, and using the same event selection cuts employed by the LHC ATLAS Collaboration, we argue that existing LHC data at 7 TeV with 4.9 fb^{-1} of integrated luminosity may distinguish a fermiophobic Higgs boson from a standard model Higgs boson near 125 GeV at about 1.9 standard deviation signal significance (1.9 sigma) per experiment. At 8 TeV we show that associated production could yield 2.8 sigma significance per experiment with 10 fb^{-1} of data.