Measurements of Higgs Bosons Decaying to Bottom Quarks from Vector Boson Fusion Production with the ATLAS Experiment at $\sqrt{s}=$ 13 TeV

TL;DR

This paper reports a measurement of the Higgs boson decaying to bottom quarks via vector boson fusion at 13 TeV using ATLAS data, employing neural networks for event classification, and finds results consistent with the Standard Model.

Contribution

It introduces an analysis of VBF Higgs production with neural network classification and combines it with photon-associated production data for improved measurement.

Findings

Signal strength close to Standard Model prediction

Observed significance of 2.6 standard deviations

Combined analysis enhances measurement precision

Abstract

The paper presents a measurement of the Standard Model Higgs Boson decaying to $b$-quark pairs in the vector boson fusion (VBF) production mode. A sample corresponding to 126 fb$^{-1}$ of $\sqrt{s} =$ 13 TeV proton-proton collision data, collected with the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, is analyzed utilizing an adversarial neural network for event classification. The signal strength, defined as the ratio of the measured signal yield to that predicted by the Standard Model for VBF Higgs production, is measured to be $0.95^{+0.38}_{-0.36}$, corresponding to an observed (expected) significance of 2.6 (2.8) standard deviations from the background only hypothesis. The results are additionally combined with an analysis of Higgs bosons decaying to $b$-quarks, produced via VBF in association with a photon.