Seeking Heavy Higgs Bosons through Cascade Decays

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential for discovering heavy Higgs bosons at the LHC through cascade decay signatures involving multiple bosons and jets, demonstrating feasible detection strategies and background rejection.

Contribution

It introduces model-independent analysis methods for heavy Higgs cascade decays and applies them to the Type-II Two-Higgs-Doublet Model, identifying sensitive parameter regions.

Findings

A 5σ discovery is achievable at 14 TeV LHC for various Higgs mass combinations.

Standard Model backgrounds can be effectively suppressed for mass reconstruction.

The analysis provides specific LHC sensitivity regions within the Type-II Two-Higgs-Doublet Model.

Abstract

We investigate the LHC discovery prospects for a heavy Higgs boson decaying into the Standard Model Higgs boson and additional weak bosons. We consider a generic model-independent new physics configuration where this decay proceeds via a cascade involving other intermediate scalar bosons and focus on an LHC final-state signature comprised either of four b-jets and two charged leptons or of four charged leptons and two b-jets. We design two analyses of the corresponding signals, and demonstrate that a 5{\sigma} discovery at the 14 TeV LHC is possible for various combinations of the parent and daughter Higgs-boson masses. We moreover find that the Standard Model backgrounds can be sufficiently rejected to guarantee the reconstrution of the parent Higgs boson mass. We apply our analyses to the Type-II Two-Higgs-Doublet Model and identify the regions of the parameter space to which the LHC is sensitive.