Search for gamma gamma decays of a Higgs boson produced in association with a fermion pair in e+e- collisions at LEP

TL;DR

This study searches for Higgs boson decays into two photons in electron-positron collision data from LEP, aiming to detect rare decay modes and improve understanding of Higgs properties.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive search for gamma gamma decays of the Higgs boson produced with fermion pairs at LEP energies.

Findings

No significant excess observed in gamma gamma decay channels.

Limits set on Higgs boson production cross-section times branching ratio.

Constraints placed on Higgs models predicting gamma gamma decays.

Abstract

A serach for gamma gamma decays of Higgs boson is performed in the data sample collected at LEP with the ALEPH detector between 1991 and 1999. This corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 672 pb-1 centre-of-mass energies ranging from 88 to 202 GeV. The search is based on topologies arising from a Higgs boson produced in association with a fermion pair via the Higgs-strahlung process e+e- -> Hffbar, with ffbar = nunubar, e+e-, mu+mu-, tau+tau- or qqbar... (CERN)