Tevatron Constraints on Models of the Higgs Boson with Exotic Spin and Parity Using Decays to Bottom-Antibottom Quark Pairs

TL;DR

This study combines data from the CDF and D0 collaborations to constrain models of the Higgs boson with exotic spin and parity, focusing on decays to bottom-antibottom pairs, and sets limits excluding certain exotic states.

Contribution

It provides the first combined constraints on exotic Higgs models with specific spins and parities using Tevatron data, improving the limits on non-standard Higgs properties.

Findings

Upper limits on exotic Higgs production rates are set at 0.36 times the standard model rate.

Excludes exotic Higgs bosons with certain spins and parities at 5 sigma significance.

Analyzes approximately 10 fb$^{-1}$ of proton-antiproton collision data.

Abstract

Combined constraints from the CDF and D0 Collaborations on models of the Higgs boson with exotic spin $J$ and parity $P$ are presented and compared with results obtained assuming the standard model value $J^P=0^+$. Both collaborations analyzed approximately 10~fb$^{-1}$ of proton-antiproton collisions with a center-of-mass energy of 1.96 TeV collected at the Fermilab Tevatron. Two models predicting exotic Higgs bosons with $J^P=0^-$ and $J^P=2^+$ are tested. The kinematic properties of exotic Higgs boson production in association with a vector boson differ from those predicted for the standard model Higgs boson. Upper limits at the 95% credibility level on the production rates of the exotic Higgs bosons, expressed as fractions of the standard model Higgs boson production rate, are set at 0.36 for both the $J^P=0^-$ hypothesis and the $J^P=2^+$ hypothesis. If the production rate times the branching ratio to a bottom-antibottom pair is the same as that predicted for the standard model Higgs boson, then the exotic bosons are excluded with significances of 5.0 standard deviations and 4.9 standard deviations for the $J^P=0^-$ and $J^P=2^+$ hypotheses, respectively.