Higgs boson pair production at the LHC in the $b \bar{b} W^+ W^-$ channel

Abstract

We consider Higgs boson pair production at the LHC in the $b \bar{b} W^+ W^-$ channel, with subsequent decay of the $W^+W^-$ pair into $\ell νj j$. Employing jet substructure and event reconstruction techniques, we show that strong evidence for this channel can be found at the 14 TeV LHC with 600 fb$^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity, thus improving the current reach for the production of Higgs boson pairs. This measurement will allow to probe the trilinear Higgs boson coupling $λ$.

Figures (3)

• Figure 1: (a) Scale variation of gluon fusion cross section for Higgs boson pair production, at LO and NLO. (b) cross sections times branching ratios at the 14 TeV LHC, for Higgs boson pair production. We show only the dominant decay modes: $b \bar{b} b \bar{b}$ (dots), $b \bar{b} jj$ (short dashes), $b \bar{b} b jjjj$ (dot-dashes), $b \bar{b} \tau^+ \tau^-$ (long dashes) and $b \bar{b} l \nu jj$ (solid). Note that the four main decay modes are fully hadronic.
• Figure 2: Distributions for signal and backgrounds of (a) $p_{T,h_1}$ after the basic cuts; and (b) $R_{b\bar{b},h_1}$, (c) $m_{h_1}$, (d) $m_{W_h}$ after the basic cuts and $p_{T,h_1} > 240$ GeV.
• Figure 3: Outputs of BDT analysis. Left: background rejection vs. signal efficiency. Right: normalized signal and background distributions against BDT response.