$Hb\bar{b}$ production in Composite Higgs Models

TL;DR

This paper explores the production of Higgs bosons in association with bottom quarks within composite Higgs models, highlighting distinctive signals and the potential to test heavy resonance masses at the LHC.

Contribution

It demonstrates the significant impact of electroweak symmetry breaking effects on decay patterns and proposes a method to distinguish composite Higgs signals from supersymmetric models.

Findings

Heavy octet masses up to 3 TeV can be tested with current LHC data.

The $4b$ final state can be efficiently separated from background.

Distinct kinematic features differentiate composite Higgs production from supersymmetric models.

Abstract

New vector-like quarks with electric charge 2/3 and -1/3 can be singly produced at hadron colliders through the exchange of a color octet vector resonance in models of strong electroweak symmetry breaking. We show that electroweak symmetry breaking effects can have a significant impact on the decay pattern of these new quarks. In particular, single production of charge -1/3 fermion resonances, mediated by a color octet vector resonance, typically results in an $H b\bar{b}$ final state with a sizeable cross section and very distinctive kinematics. We consider the leading $H\to b\bar{b}$ decay and show that the $4b$ signal can be very efficiently disentangled from the background: heavy octet masses of up to 3 TeV can be tested with the data already collected at the LHC and up to 5 TeV with an integrated luminosity of 100 fb$^{-1}$ at $\sqrt{s}=14$ TeV. We also discuss the kinematical differences between the $Hb\bar{b}$ production in models of strong electroweak symmetry breaking and supersymmetric models and the implications on the phenomenology of non-minimal composite Higgs models.