Higgs pair production in vector-boson fusion at the LHC and beyond

Fady Bishara*, Roberto Contino, Juan Rojo

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

The production of pairs of Higgs bosons at hadron colliders provides unique information on the Higgs sector and on the mechanism underlying electroweak symmetry breaking (EWSB). Most studies have concentrated on the gluon-fusion production mode which has the largest cross section. However, despite its small production rate, the vector-boson fusion channel can also be relevant since even small modifications of the Higgs couplings to vector bosons induce a striking increase of the cross section as a function of the invariant mass of the Higgs boson pair. In this work we exploit this unique signature to propose a strategy to extract the hhVV quartic coupling and provide model-independent constraints on theories where EWSB is driven by new strong interactions. We take advantage of the higher signal yield of the bb¯ bb¯ final state and make extensive use of jet-substructure techniques to reconstruct signal events with a boosted topology, characteristic of large partonic energies, where each Higgs boson decays to a single collimated jet. Our results demonstrate that the hhVV coupling can be measured with 45% (20%) precision at the LHC for L= 300 (3000) fb- 1, while a 1% precision can be achieved at a 100 TeV collider.

Original languageEnglish
Article number481
Number of pages26
JournalEuropean Physical Journal C
Volume77
Issue number7
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 19 Jul 2017

Funding

We thank Nathan Hartland for assistance with the Sherpa event generation and for many discussions about Higgs pair production. F. B. is supported by a STFC Consolidated Grant and acknowledges the hospitality and support of the CERN Theory department. The work of R. C. was partly supported by the ERC Advanced Grant No. 267985, Electroweak Symmetry Breaking, Flavour and Dark Matter: One Solution for Three Mysteries (DaMeSyFla). J. R. is supported by the ERC Starting Grant “PDF4BSM”.

FundersFunder number
Seventh Framework Programme267985
CERN
Science and Technology Facilities Council
European Research Council

    Keywords

    • hep-ph
    • hep-ex

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