1. Particle Physics Seminar

    "Searches for decays of a Higgs boson into pairs of light (pseudo)scalars with the ATLAS detector"

    Presented by Ljiljana Morvaj

    Tuesday, September 25, 2018, 10:30 am
    Small Seminar Room, Bldg. 510

    Hosted by: Alessandro Tricoli

    The branching ratio of the Standard Model (SM) Higgs boson to non-SM or "exotic" states is currently constrained to be less than 34% at 95% confidence level. This opens possibility to search for new particles in the decays of the Higgs boson. Such searches could provide a unique access to hidden-sector states that are singlets under the SM gauge transformations. A search for decays of the Higgs boson to a pair of new spin–0 particles, H → aa, where the a–bosons decay to a b-quark pair and a muon pair, is presented in this seminar. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton-proton collisions data with √s = 13 TeV recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC in 2015 and 2016. No deviation from the Standard Model prediction is observed and limits on Br(H → aa → bbμμ) are set in the a–boson mass range of 20–60 GeV. Searches in other final states, such as four b-quarks (H → aa → 4b) and two jets and two photons (H → aa → ggγγ), are also discussed.