Search for doubly charged Higgs boson production in multi-lepton final states using 139 fb$^{-1}$ of proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

TL;DR

This paper reports a search for doubly charged Higgs bosons decaying into same-charge leptons using 139 fb$^{-1}$ of proton-proton collision data at 13 TeV, setting new mass limits and no evidence of signal.

Contribution

It provides the most stringent lower mass limits on doubly charged Higgs bosons in multiple models using ATLAS data from Run 2.

Findings

No evidence of doubly charged Higgs bosons was observed.

Lower mass limit of 1080 GeV within the left-right symmetric model.

Lower mass limit of 900 GeV in the Zee-Babu neutrino mass model.

Abstract

A search for pair production of doubly charged Higgs bosons ($H^{\pm \pm}$), each decaying into a pair of prompt, isolated, highly energetic leptons with the same electric charge, is presented. The search uses a proton-proton collision data sample at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb$^{-1}$ recorded by the ATLAS detector during Run 2 of the Large Hadron Collider. This analysis focuses on same-charge leptonic decays, $H^{\pm \pm} \rightarrow \ell^{\pm} \ell^{\prime \pm}$ where $\ell, \ell^\prime=e, \mu, \tau$, in two-, three-, and four-lepton channels, but only considers final states which include electrons or muons. No evidence of a signal is observed. Corresponding limits on the production cross-section and consequently a lower limit on $m(H^{\pm \pm})$ are derived at 95% confidence level. Assuming that the branching ratios to each of the possible leptonic final states are equal, $\mathcal{B}(H^{\pm \pm} \rightarrow e^\pm e^\pm) = \mathcal{B}(H^{\pm \pm} \rightarrow e^\pm \mu^\pm) = \mathcal{B}(H^{\pm \pm} \rightarrow \mu^\pm \mu^\pm) = \mathcal{B}(H^{\pm \pm} \rightarrow e^\pm \tau^\pm) = \mathcal{B}(H^{\pm \pm} \rightarrow \mu^\pm \tau^\pm) = \mathcal{B}(H^{\pm \pm} \rightarrow \tau^\pm \tau^\pm) = 1/6$, the observed lower limit on the mass of a doubly charged Higgs boson is 1080 GeV within the left-right symmetric type-II seesaw model, which is an improvement over previous limits. Additionally, a lower limit of $m(H^{\pm \pm})$ = 900 GeV is obtained in the context of the Zee-Babu neutrino mass model.