Polarized Z bosons from the decay of a Higgs boson produced in association with two jets at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper explores the polarization of Z bosons from Higgs decays in Higgs plus two jets events at the LHC, using a reweighting method to analyze polarization observables and discussing potential higher-order extensions.

Contribution

It introduces a method to extract Z-boson polarization from Higgs decay data in Higgs+2 jets events, applicable to both gluon-fusion and vector-boson fusion channels, with prospects for higher-order analysis.

Findings

Demonstrated polarization extraction using a fully-differential reweighting technique.

Analyzed Z-boson polarization in Higgs+2 jets events at the LHC.

Discussed extension of the method to higher-order perturbative calculations.

Abstract

Investigating the polarization of weak bosons provides an important probe of the scalar and gauge sector of the Standard Model. This can be done in the Higgs decay to four leptons, whose Standard-Model leading-order amplitude enables to generate polarized observables from unpolarized ones via a fully-differential reweighting method. We study the Z-boson polarization from the decay of a Higgs boson produced in association with two jets, both in the gluon-fusion and in the vector-boson fusion channel. We also address the possibility of extending the results of this work to higher orders in perturbation theory.