Search for a massive resonance decaying to a pair of Higgs bosons in the four b quark final state in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=$ 13 TeV

TL;DR

This paper searches for heavy particles decaying into two Higgs bosons in the four b-quark final state using 13 TeV proton-proton collision data, setting new limits on certain theoretical models.

Contribution

It introduces a novel search strategy for high-mass resonances decaying to Higgs pairs in boosted jet topologies at the LHC.

Findings

No significant excess observed over background.

Set upper limits on production cross sections of bulk gravitons and radions.

Limits are the most stringent to date for the mass range 750-3000 GeV.

Abstract

A search for a massive resonance decaying into a pair of standard model Higgs bosons, in a final state consisting of two b quark-antiquark pairs, is performed. A data sample of proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV is used, collected by the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC in 2016, and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb$^{-1}$. The Higgs bosons are highly Lorentz-boosted and are each reconstructed as a single large-area jet. The signal is characterized by a peak in the dijet invariant mass distribution, above a background from the standard model multijet production. The observations are consistent with the background expectations, and are interpreted as upper limits on the products of the $s$-channel production cross sections and branching fractions of narrow bulk gravitons and radions in warped extra-dimensional models. The limits range from 126 to 1.4 fb at 95% confidence level for resonances with masses between 750 and 3000 GeV, and are the most stringent to date, over the explored mass range.