New light on WW scattering at the LHC with W jet tagging

TL;DR

This paper improves the analysis of WW scattering at the LHC by using W jet tagging, enhancing the detection of deviations from the Standard Model Higgs and aiding in the discovery of strongly-interacting light Higgs models.

Contribution

It introduces a W jet tagging method to enhance WW scattering analysis, increasing signal retention and statistical significance for new physics detection at the LHC.

Findings

20% increase in statistical significance for SILH detection

200% more signal events retained with W jet tagging

Potential to discover SILH with 40 to 3000 fb^{-1} data

Abstract

After the recent discovery of a 125 GeV Higgs-like particle at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), it is crucial to examine its role in unitarizing high energy W_LW_L scattering, which may reveal its possible deviation from a Standard Model Higgs. We perform an updated study on WW scattering in the semileptonic channel at the LHC, improved by the recently developed W jet tagging method. The resultant statistical significance of a Strongly-Interacting Light Higgs (SILH) model is about 20% larger than that based on the conventionally "gold-plated" dileptonic channel, while 200% more signal events are retained. This allows the discovery of an SILH model if the signal strength is 100% (10%) of a pure Higgsless model, using about 40 (3000) fb^{-1} data at the 14 TeV LHC. Meanwhile, the excellent sensitivity to the anomalous Higgs-W boson coupling makes semileptonic WW scattering an important complement to precision measurements at the Higgs resonance.