# Impact of additional bosons on the exploration of the Higgs boson at the LHC

## TL;DR

This paper investigates how additional heavy scalar bosons could influence Higgs boson measurements at the LHC, focusing on potential contamination of observed rates and implications for new physics searches.

## Contribution

It analyzes the impact of a hypothetical heavy scalar boson decaying into a lighter scalar and a Higgs, assessing how this affects Higgs rate measurements at the LHC.

## Key findings

- Contamination in Vh→bb measurements is estimated to be small.
- The production of a heavy scalar H can significantly alter Higgs rate observations.
- Impact depends on the decay mode of the lighter scalar S.

## Abstract

The LHC is making strides in the exploration of the properties of the newly discoverd Higgs boson, $h$. In Refs.~\cite{vonBuddenbrock:2015ema,Kumar:2016vut,vonBuddenbrock:2016rmr} the compatibility of the proton-proton data reported in the Run I period with the presence of a heavy scalar, $H$, with a mass around 270\,GeV and its implications were explored. This boson would decay predominantly to $H\rightarrow Sh$, where $S$, is a lighter scalar boson. The production cross-section of $pp\rightarrow H(\rightarrow Sh) + X$ is considerable and it would significantly affect the inclusive rate of $h$. The contamination from this new production mechanism would depend strongly on the final state used to measure the rate of $h$. The contamination in the rate measurement of $Vh(\rightarrow b\overline{b}), V=Z,W$ is estimated to be small. This statement does not depend strongly on assumptions made on the decay of $S$.