Measurements of Higgs boson production in the decay channel with a pair of $\tau$ leptons in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV

TL;DR

This paper reports precise measurements of Higgs boson production via decay into tau leptons at 13 TeV, using advanced analysis techniques to compare results with Standard Model predictions across multiple production modes.

Contribution

It introduces combined neural network and event categorization analyses for Higgs to tau tau decays, providing detailed signal strength measurements in various production channels.

Findings

Measured inclusive Higgs production signal strength as 0.82 ± 0.11.

Determined gluon fusion and vector boson fusion signal strengths as 0.67 ± 0.19 and 0.81 ± 0.17.

Observed vector boson associated production with a signal strength of 1.79 ± 0.45.

Abstract

Measurements of Higgs boson production, where the Higgs boson decays into a pair of $\tau$ leptons, are presented, using a sample of proton-proton collisions collected with the CMS experiment at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb$^{-1}$. Three analyses are presented. Two are targeting Higgs boson production via gluon fusion and vector boson fusion: a neural network based analysis and an analysis based on an event categorization optimized on the ratio of signal over background events. These are complemented by an analysis targeting vector boson associated Higgs boson production. Results are presented in the form of signal strengths relative to the standard model predictions and products of cross sections and branching fraction to $\tau$ leptons, in up to 16 different kinematic regions. For the simultaneous measurements of the neural network based analysis and the analysis targeting vector boson associated Higgs boson production signal strengths are found to be 0.82 $\pm$ 0.11 for inclusive Higgs boson production, 0.67 $\pm$ 0.19 (0.81 $\pm$ 0.17) for the production mainly via gluon fusion (vector boson fusion), and 1.79 $\pm$ 0.45 for vector boson associated Higgs boson production.