Search for heavy resonances decaying into two Higgs bosons or into a Higgs boson and a W or Z boson in proton-proton collisions at 13 TeV

TL;DR

This paper reports a search for heavy resonances decaying into Higgs bosons or into a Higgs and a W/Z boson using 13 TeV proton-proton collision data, setting new exclusion limits on various models.

Contribution

First limits at 13 TeV for heavy resonances decaying into Higgs and vector bosons in specified channels, with optimized reconstruction techniques for boosted tau pairs.

Findings

No significant excess observed over standard model expectations.

Excludes radion resonances below 2.7 TeV and W'/Z' resonances below 2.8 TeV.

Provides the first limits for these decay channels at 13 TeV.

Abstract

A search is presented for massive narrow resonances decaying either into two Higgs bosons, or into a Higgs boson and a W or Z boson. The decay channels considered are HH $\to \mathrm{b\overline{b}}\tau^{+}\tau^{-}$ and VH $\to \mathrm{q\overline{q}}\tau^{+}\tau^{-}$, where H denotes the Higgs boson, and V denotes the W or Z boson. This analysis is based on a data sample of proton-proton collisions collected at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV by the CMS Collaboration, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb$^{-1}$. For the TeV-scale mass resonances considered, substructure techniques provide ways to differentiate among the hadronization products from vector boson decays to quarks, Higgs boson decays to bottom quarks, and quark- or gluon-induced jets. Reconstruction techniques are used that have been specifically optimized to select events in which the tau lepton pair is highly boosted. The observed data are consistent with standard model expectations and upper limits are set at 95% confidence level on the product of cross section and branching fraction for resonance masses between 0.9 and 4.0 TeV. Exclusion limits are set in the context of bulk radion and graviton models: spin-0 radion resonances are excluded below a mass of 2.7 TeV at 95% confidence level. In the spin-1 heavy vector triplet framework, mass-degenerate W' and Z' resonances with dominant couplings to the standard model gauge bosons are excluded below a mass of 2.8 TeV at 95% confidence level. There are the first limits for these decay channels at $\sqrt{s} =$ 13 TeV.