Prospects for $\gamma\gamma\to$ Higgs observation in ultraperipheral ion collisions at the Future Circular Collider

TL;DR

This paper investigates the potential to observe Higgs boson production via two-photon interactions in ultraperipheral heavy-ion collisions at the FCC, demonstrating feasibility with realistic detection and background suppression.

Contribution

It provides a detailed feasibility study of Higgs observation in ultraperipheral ion collisions at the FCC, including signal and background analysis with realistic detector effects.

Findings

Higgs production cross sections are 1.75 nb in PbPb and 1.5 pb in pPb collisions.

Observation of Higgs in PbPb collisions is feasible within the first year.

Effective background suppression strategies enable potential Higgs detection.

Abstract

We study the two-photon production of the Higgs boson, $\rm \gamma\gamma\to H$, at the Future Circular Collider (FCC) in ultraperipheral PbPb and pPb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 39$ and 63 TeV. Signal and background events are generated with MADGRAPH 5, including $\gamma$ fluxes from the proton and lead ions in the equivalent photon approximation, yielding $\rm \sigma(\gamma\gamma\to H)$ = 1.75 nb and 1.5 pb in PbPb and pPb collisions respectively. We analyse the H$\,\to b\bar{b}$ decay channel including realistic reconstruction efficiencies for the final-state $b$-jets, showered and hadronized with PYTHIA 8, as well as appropriate selection criteria to reduce the dominant exclusive $\gamma\gamma\to b\bar{b}$ continuum background. Observation of $\rm PbPb\xrightarrow{\gamma\gamma}(Pb)\,H\,(Pb)$ is achievable in the first year with the expected PbPb integrated luminosities.