Limitations and Opportunities of Off-Shell Coupling Measurements

Abstract

Indirect constraints on the total Higgs width ${\Gamma }_h$ from correlating Higgs signal strengths with cross section measurements in the off-shell region for $p(g)p(g)\to 4\ell$ production have received considerable attention recently, and the CMS collaboration have published a first measurement. We revisit this analysis from a new physics and unitarity constraints perspective and conclude that limits on ${\Gamma }_h$ obtained in this fashion are not reliable unless we make model-specific assumptions, which cannot be justified at the current stage of the LHC programme. Relaxing the ${\Gamma }_h$ interpretation, we discuss the merits of high invariant mass cross section measurements in the context of Higgs CP analyses, higher dimensional operator testing, and resolved new physics in the light of electroweak precision constraints beyond effective theory limitations. Furthermore, we show that a rather model-independent LHC constraint can be obtained from adapting the $gg\to 4\ell$ analysis to the weak boson fusion channels at lower statistical yield.

10 pages, 9 figures, extended WBF discussion, references added, typos corrected, published version

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Cited by in corpus (39)

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• Measurements of the Higgs boson width and anomalous HVV couplings from on-shell and off-shell production in the four-lepton final state
• Vices and Virtues of Higgs EFTs at Large Energy
• Taming the off-shell Higgs boson
• Indirect constraints on the Georgi-Machacek model and implications for Higgs couplings
• Beyond Geolocating: Constraining Higher Dimensional Operators in $H\to 4\ell$ with Off-Shell Production and More
• Measurement of the Higgs boson width and evidence of its off-shell contributions to ZZ production
• Higgs ultraviolet softening
• Higgs couplings: disentangling New Physics with off-shell measurements
• Jet Vetoes Interfering with H->WW
• Evidence of off-shell Higgs boson production from $ZZ$ leptonic decay channels and constraints on its total width with the ATLAS detector
• Interference effects for Higgs-mediated Z-pair plus jet production
• Higgs characterisation in the presence of theoretical uncertainties and invisible decays
• Probing Higgs couplings to light quarks via Higgs pair production
• On-shell interference effects in Higgs final states
• Four-lepton production in gluon fusion at NLO matched to parton showers
• More light on Higgs flavor at the LHC: Higgs couplings to light quarks through $h+\gamma$ production
• Power meets Precision to explore the Symmetric Higgs Portal
• Interference effects in the $H(\to \gamma \gamma )+2$ jets channel at the LHC
• Off-shell effects in Higgs processes at a linear collider and implications for the LHC
• Off-shell Higgs Couplings in $H^{\ast }\to ZZ\to \ell \ell \nu \nu$
• Bounding the Higgs Width Using Effective Field Theory
• Off-shell Higgs production at the LHC as a probe of the trilinear Higgs coupling
• Observation of electroweak production of two jets and a $Z$-boson pair
• Extracting the Top-Quark Width from Non-Resonant Production
• Discriminating between Higgs Production Mechanisms via Jet Charge at the LHC
• Signal-background interference effects in Higgs-mediated diphoton production beyond NLO
• Form Factors in Higgs Couplings from Physics Beyond the Standard Model
• Higher-Order Corrections to Quantum Observables in $h\to W{W}^{\ast }$
• Constraint on the total width of the Higgs boson from Higgs boson and four-top-quark measurements in $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector
• Signal-background interference for digluon resonances at the Large Hadron Collider
• Theory Summary and Prospects
• An approach to constraining the Higgs width at the LHC and HL-LHC
• Off-shell effects in Higgs decays to heavy gauge bosons and signal-background interference in Higgs decays to photons at a linear collider
• Impact of fermionic operators on the Higgs width measurement
• Impact of New Physics on Momentum-Dependent Particle Widths and Propagators
• Directly Probing the Higgs-top Coupling at High Scales