New Physics in Resonant Production of Higgs Boson Pairs

Vernon Barger, Lisa L. Everett, C. B. Jackson, Andrea D. Peterson, and Gabe Shaughnessy

Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 011801 – Published 6 January 2015

Abstract

We advocate a search for an extended scalar sector at the LHC via $h h$ production, where $h$ is the 125 GeV Higgs boson. A resonance feature in the $h h$ invariant mass is a smoking gun of an $s$ -channel heavy Higgs resonance, $H$ . With one $h$ decaying to two photons and the other decaying to $b$ quarks, the resonant signal may be discoverable above the $h h$ continuum background for $M_{H} < 1 TeV$ . The product of the scalar and top Yukawa couplings can be measured to better than 10%–20% accuracy, and its sign can be inferred from the $h h$ line shape via interference effects.

Received 31 July 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.011801

Authors & Affiliations

Vernon Barger¹, Lisa L. Everett¹, C. B. Jackson², Andrea D. Peterson¹, and Gabe Shaughnessy¹

¹Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA
²Department of Physics, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, Texas 76019, USA