Determining the Higgs spin and parity in the diphoton decay channel

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how gluon polarization affects the diphoton decay distributions of spin-0 and spin-2 bosons, providing a method to determine the Higgs boson's spin and parity through angular and momentum distributions.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed calculation of diphoton distributions considering gluon polarization effects for various boson spins and couplings, aiding in spin-parity determination.

Findings

Gluon polarization causes distinguishable differences in diphoton distributions.

Azimuthal distributions are non-isotropic for certain spin-2 hypotheses.

Distributions can differentiate between scalar, pseudoscalar, and spin-2 states.

Abstract

We calculate the diphoton distribution in the decay of arbitrary spin-0 and spin-2 bosons produced from gluon fusion, taking into account the fact that gluons inside an unpolarized proton are generally linearly polarized. The gluon polarization brings about a difference in the transverse momentum distribution of positive and negative parity states. At the same time, it causes the azimuthal distribution of the photon pair to be non-isotropic for several spin-2 coupling hypotheses, allowing one to distinguish these from the isotropic scalar and pseudoscalar distributions.