Tests of BSM Higgs interactions by the combination $(\kappa_V^2-\kappa_{2V})$ in HHjj production at LHC

TL;DR

This paper investigates the potential to distinguish Beyond Standard Model Higgs interactions by analyzing the specific combination V^2-V_{2V} in double Higgs production with jets at the LHC, using detailed simulations and proposing optimized analysis strategies.

Contribution

It introduces a novel focus on the V^2-V_{2V} combination within the HEFT framework for HHjj production, demonstrating improved sensitivity at the HL-LHC with specific event selection techniques.

Findings

Sensitivity to V^2-V_{2V} can be significantly improved with optimized cuts.

Discriminating variables like  and P^T_{} are effective in separating BSM signals from background.

High transverse momentum of photon and b-jet pairs correlates with non-zero V^2-V_{2V} value.

Abstract

In this work, we study the potential of analyzing the particular combination of $\kappa$ modifiers given by $\kappa_V^2-\kappa_{2V}$ to disentangle Beyond Standard Model Higgs signals in double Higgs production with two extra light jets at LHC. We use the Higgs Effective Field Theory approach, HEFT, for the gauge invariant description of these two $\kappa_V$ and $\kappa_{2V}$ parameters representing the BSM interactions of the Higgs particle with the electroweak gauge bosons, $HVV$ and $HHVV$ respectively. We illustrate the bonus of studying this particular combination $\kappa_V^2-\kappa_{2V}$ focusing in just one process, $HHjj$, instead of studying $\kappa_V$ and $\kappa_{2V}$ separately using various processes. For the detailed analysis here, we focus on the particular final state $H(\to \gamma \gamma) H (\to b \bar b)jj'$, with two photons, two b-jets and two light jets, which we analyze fully including parton showering, fragmentation, hadronization and detector effects, in both signal and main background. We find that the sensitivity to $\kappa_V^2-\kappa_{2V}$ could be notably improved at the HL-LHC by the proper cuts on the final state $b \bar b \gamma \gamma jj'$ that select optimally the events with VBF-topology and $HH$-topology. In particular, we propose strategies based on a good isolation of $\gamma \gamma$ and b-jet pairs, and focus specially on specific variables like $\eta_{\gamma \gamma}$ and $P^T_{\gamma \gamma}$ where the signal events distributions may efficiently discriminate between BSM signal versus SM background. We will show here how the high transversality of these two pairs in the signal (inherited from the high transversality of the $H$'s) is correlated with the non-vanishing value of this $(\kappa_V^2-\kappa_{2V})$ combination.