Constraining portals with displaced Higgs decay searches at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper introduces a Monte Carlo reinterpretation method for LHC searches targeting long-lived particles from Higgs decays, providing new constraints on portal models through efficiency tables.

Contribution

It develops a novel Monte Carlo approach using efficiency tables to reinterpret existing LHC displaced decay searches for constraining portal models.

Findings

Exclusion regions in mixing-mass space are established.

The method enables reinterpretation of displaced decay searches.

Constraints on portal models are improved.

Abstract

It is very easy to write down models in which long-lived particles decaying to standard model states are pair-produced via Higgs decays, resulting in the signature of approximately back-to-back pairs of displaced narrow hadronic jets and/or lepton jets at the LHC. The LHC collaborations have already searched for such signatures with no observed excess. This paper describes a Monte Carlo method to reinterpret the searches. The method relies on (ideally multidimensional) efficiency tables, thus we implore collaborations to include them in any future work. Exclusion regions in mixing-mass parameter space are presented which constrain portal models.