Constraints on the off-shell Higgs boson signal strength in the high-mass ZZ and WW final states with the ATLAS detector

• Autor(a) principal: Santos, S. P. Amor dos
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Outros Autores: Carvalho, J., Fiolhais, M. C. N., Galhardo, B., Veloso, F., Wolters, H., ATLAS Collaboration
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10316/109108; https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-015-3542-2

Measurements of the ZZ and WW final states in the mass range above the 2mZ and 2mW thresholds provide a unique opportunity to measure the off-shell coupling strength of the Higgs boson. This paper presents constraints on the off-shell Higgs boson event yields normalised to the StandardModel prediction (signal strength) in the ZZ → 4 , ZZ → 2 2ν and WW → eνμν final states. The result is based on pp collision data collected by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb−1 at a collision energy of √ s = 8 TeV. Using the CLs method, the observed 95 % confidence level (CL) upper limit on the off-shell signal strength is in the range 5.1–8.6, with an expected range of 6.7–11.0. In each case the range is determined by varying the unknown gg → ZZ and gg → WW background K-factor from higher-order quantum chromodynamics corrections between half and twice the value of the known signal K-factor. Assuming the relevant Higgs boson couplings are independent of the energy scale of the Higgs boson production, a combination with the on-shell measurements yields an observed (expected) 95 %CL upper limit on H/ SM H in the range 4.5–7.5 (6.5–11.2) using the same variations of the background K-factor. Assuming that the unknown gg → VV background K-factor is equal to the signal K-factor, this translates into an observed (expected) 95 % CL upper limit on the Higgs boson total width of 22.7 (33.0) MeV.