Boosted $hh \rightarrow b\bar{b}b\bar{b}$: a new topology in searches for TeV-scale resonances at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper proposes a new topology for detecting TeV-scale resonances decaying into four b-quarks at the LHC, which significantly reduces background and enhances search sensitivity for new physics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel event topology involving two back-to-back boosted dijet systems for improved detection of heavy resonances decaying to four b-quarks.

Findings

Backgrounds are dramatically reduced using the new topology.

Sensitivity to a 1 TeV resonance can reach a few femtobarns with 2012 LHC data.

The approach is applicable to related boosted final states like $Zh$ and $ZZ$ decays.

Abstract

It is widely believed that fully hadronic final states are not competitive in searches for new physics at the Large Hadron Collider due to the overwhelming QCD backgrounds. In this letter, we present a particle-level study of the topology arising when a TeV-scale resonance decays to two Higgs bosons and these subsequently decay to $b\bar{b}$, leading to two back-to-back boosted dijet systems. We show that selecting events with this topology dramatically reduces all backgrounds, thus enabling very competitive searches for new physics in a variety of models. For a resonance with mass 1 TeV and width around 60 GeV, we find that ATLAS or CMS could have a sensitivity to a $\sigma \times BR$ as small as a few fb with the LHC data collected in 2012. These conclusions are also relevant to the boosted $Zh\rightarrow b\bar{b}b\bar{b}$ and $ZZ\rightarrow b\bar{b}b\bar{b}$ final states, which would further increase the potential sensitivity to new physics as well as to Standard Model processes like longitudinal vector boson scattering.