H Marks the Spot: Searching for Exotic Production of Higgs + X to Map Out New Physics

TL;DR

This paper proposes using Higgs bosons as tags to discover new heavy particles, suggesting that dedicated searches could surpass current LHC methods in detecting exotic Higgs production from decays of electroweak-charged fields.

Contribution

It introduces a novel search strategy leveraging Higgs tagging for detecting exotic production of Higgs + X, especially from vector-like lepton decays, improving sensitivity at the electroweak scale.

Findings

Current bounds imply hundreds to thousands of Higgses produced from vector-like lepton decays.

Dedicated searches could significantly enhance detection reach for new physics.

Higgs tagging offers a promising avenue for exploring beyond Standard Model phenomena.

Abstract

We propose leveraging our proficiency for detecting Higgs resonances by using the Higgs as a tagging object for new heavy physics. In particular, we argue that searches for exotic Higgs production from decays of color-singlet fields with electroweak charges could beat current searches at the LHC which look for their decays to vectors. As an example, we study the production and decay of vector-like leptons which admit Yukawa couplings with SM leptons. We find that bounds from Run 2 searches are consistent with anywhere from hundreds to many thousands of Higgses having been produced in their decays over the same period, depending on the representation. Dedicated searches for these signatures may thus be able to significantly improve our reach at the electroweak energy frontier.