Search for a heavy Higgs boson decaying into two lighter Higgs bosons in the $\tau\tau$bb final state at 13 TeV

TL;DR

This paper reports a search for a heavy Higgs boson decaying into a pair of lighter Higgs bosons in the tau tau and bb final states at 13 TeV, setting upper limits on production cross sections without observing a signal.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive search for a heavy Higgs decaying into two lighter Higgs bosons in specific decay channels using 13 TeV data, providing model-independent upper limits.

Findings

No significant signal observed.

Set 95% CL upper limits on production cross section times branching ratio.

Limits range from 125 fb to 2.7 fb depending on mass.

Abstract

A search for a heavy Higgs boson H decaying into the observed Higgs boson h with a mass of 125 GeV and another Higgs boson h$_\mathrm{S}$ is presented. The h and h$_\mathrm{S}$ bosons are required to decay into a pair of tau leptons and a pair of b quarks, respectively. The search uses a sample of proton-proton collisions collected with the CMS detector at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 137 fb$^{-1}$. Mass ranges of 240-3000 GeV for $m_\mathrm{H}$ and 60-2800 GeV for $m_\mathrm{h_S}$ are explored in the search. No signal has been observed. Model independent 95% confidence level upper limits on the product of the production cross section and the branching fractions of the signal process are set with a sensitivity ranging from 125 fb (for $m_\mathrm{H}$ $=$ 240 GeV) to 2.7 fb (for $m_\mathrm{H}$ $=$ 1000 GeV). These limits are compared to maximally allowed products of the production cross section and the branching fractions of the signal process in the next-to-minimal supersymmetric extension of the standard model.