Production and hadronic decays of Higgs bosons in heavy ion collisions

TL;DR

This paper explores how Higgs bosons produced in heavy-ion collisions at the LHC and future colliders decay and are detected, highlighting potential advantages in studying their properties due to the unique medium effects.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to studying Higgs boson decays in heavy-ion collisions, emphasizing the impact of the quark-gluon plasma on decay signatures and detection strategies.

Findings

Hadronic decays of Higgs may be less suppressed in quark-gluon plasma.

Jets from electroweak bosons and top quarks suffer significant energy loss.

Enhanced signal-to-background ratio in hadronic decay channels.

Abstract

We examine Higgs boson production and decay in heavy-ion collisions at the LHC and future colliders. Owing to the long lifetime of the Higgs boson, its hadronic decays may experience little or no screening from the hot and dense quark-gluon plasma whereas jets from hard scattering processes and from decays of the electro-weak gauge bosons and the top-quark suffer significant energy loss. This distinction can lead to enhanced signal to background ratios in hadronic decay channels and thus, for example, provide alternative ways to probe the Yukawa coupling of the Higgs boson to the bottom quark and its lifetime.