Boosted Higgses from chromomagnetic $b$'s: $b\bar{b}h$ at high luminosity

TL;DR

This paper explores how the chromomagnetic dipole operator for the bottom quark can produce boosted Higgs events, proposing collider search strategies to constrain or detect this new physics signature at the LHC.

Contribution

It introduces a novel collider search method targeting boosted Higgses from the bottom quark chromomagnetic operator, improving bounds on its cutoff scale.

Findings

Current constraints are weak, with cutoff scales as low as 1 TeV.

Proposed cuts can exclude cutoff scales up to 6 TeV with high luminosity.

Boosted Higgs signatures are key to identifying this operator's effects.

Abstract

This paper examines detection prospects and constraints on the chromomagnetic dipole operator for the bottom quark. This operator has a flavor, chirality and Lorentz structure that is distinct from other dimension six operators considered in Higgs coupling studies. Its non-standard Lorentz structure bolsters boosted $b \bar{b} h$ events, providing a rate independent signal of new physics. To date, we find this operator is unconstrained by $p p \rightarrow h + {\rm jets}$ and $pp \rightarrow \bar b b $ searches: for order-one couplings the permitted cutoff $\Lambda$ for this operator can be as low as $\Lambda \sim 1~{\rm TeV}$. We show how to improve this bound with collider cuts that allow a $b$-tagged Higgs plus dijet search in the Higgs to diphoton decay channel to exclude cutoffs as high as $\sim 6~{\rm TeV}$ at $2 \sigma$ with 3 $\text{ab}^{-1}$ of luminosity at the 14 TeV LHC. Cuts on the $p_T$ of the Higgs are key to this search, because the chromomagnetic dipole yields a non-standard fraction of boosted Higgses.