Searching for H -> gamma gamma in weak boson fusion at the LHC

Abstract

Weak boson fusion is a copious source of intermediate mass Higgs bosons at the LHC, with a rate sigma*B(H -> gamma gamma) of up to 9 fb. The additional very energetic forward jets in these events provide for a unique signature. A parton level analysis of the dominant backgrounds demonstrates that this channel allows the observation of H -> gamma gamma in a low background environment, with modest luminosity.

Figures (4)

• Figure 1: Normalized pseudo-rapidity distributions of (a) the most central tagging jet and (b) the photon closest to the beam axis in $jj\gamma\gamma$ events at the LHC. The generic acceptance cuts of Eq. (\ref{['eq:1']}) and the forward jet tagging cuts of Eq. (\ref{['eq:2']}) are imposed. Results are shown for the $qq\to qqH$ signal at $m_H=120$ GeV (solid line) for the irreducible QCD background (dashed line), the irreducible EW background (dot-dashed line), and for the double parton scattering (DPS) background (dotted line).
• Figure 2: Transverse momentum distributions of (a) the softer and (b) the harder of the two tagging jets in $jj\gamma\gamma$ events. Generic acceptance cuts (Eq. (\ref{['eq:1']})) and forward jet tagging cuts (Eq. (\ref{['eq:2']})). are imposed. The signal (solid curve) and the backgrounds are labeled as in Fig. \ref{['fig:y_dist']}.
• Figure 3: Transverse momentum distributions of (a) the softer and (b) the harder of the two photons in $jj\gamma\gamma$ events. Generic acceptance cuts (Eq. (\ref{['eq:1']})) and forward jet tagging cuts (Eq. (\ref{['eq:2']})) are imposed. The signal (solid curve) and the backgrounds are labeled as in Fig. \ref{['fig:y_dist']}.
• Figure 4: Higgs boson signal cross section (in fb) and diphoton invariant mass distribution (in fb/GeV) for the backgrounds after the cuts of Eqs. (\ref{['eq:1']},\ref{['eq:2']},\ref{['eq:3']}). The squares are the Higgs signal for $m_H = 100,110,120,130,140,150$ GeV. The solid line represents the sum of all backgrounds, with individual components from the irreducible QCD background (dashed line), the irreducible EW background (dot-dashed line), and for the double parton scattering (DPS) background (dotted line) shown below.