High Energy Physics Seminar

A search for new heavy resonances decaying to a pair of Higgs bosons (HH) in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV is presented. Data were collected with the CMS detector at the LHC in 2016--2018, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb^{-1}. Resonances with a mass between 0.8 and 4.5 TeV are considered using events in which one Higgs boson decays into a bottom quark pair and the other into final states with either one or two charged leptons. Specifically, the single-lepton decay channel HH→bbWW*→bbℓνqq and the dilepton decay channels HH→bbWW*→bbℓνℓν and HH→bbττ→bbℓννℓνν are examined, where ℓ in the final state corresponds to an electron or muon. The signal is extracted using a two-dimensional maximum likelihood fit of the H→bb jet mass and HH invariant mass distributions. No significant excess above the standard model expectation is observed in data. Model-independent exclusion limits are placed on the product of the cross section and branching fraction for narrow spin-0 and spin-2 massive bosons decaying to HH. The results provide the most stringent limits to date for X→HH signatures with final-state leptons and at some masses provide the most sensitive limits of all X→HH searches.

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