Interference effects in the $H(\to \gamma \gamma )+2$ jets channel at the LHC

Abstract

We compute the interference between the resonant process $pp\to H(\to \gamma \gamma )+2\text{ jets}$ and the corresponding continuum background at leading order in QCD. For the Higgs signal, we include gluon fusion (GF) and vector boson fusion (VBF) production channels, while for the background we consider all tree-level contributions, including pure EW effects ($\mathcal{O}({\alpha }_{QED}^4)$) and QCD contributions ($\mathcal{O}({\alpha }_{QED}^2{\alpha }_s^2)$), plus the loop-induced gluon-initiated process. After convolution with the experimental mass resolution, the main effect of the interference is to shift the position of the mass peak, as in the inclusive GF case studied previously. The apparent mass shift is small in magnitude but strongly dependent on the Higgs width, potentially allowing for a measurement of, or bound on, the width itself. In the $H(\to \gamma \gamma )+2\text{ jets}$ channel, the VBF and GF contributions generate shifts of opposite signs which largely cancel, depending on the sets of cuts used, to as little as 5 MeV (toward a lower Higgs mass). The small magnitude of the shift makes this channel a good reference mass for measuring the inclusive mass shift of around 60 MeV in the Standard Model.

7 pages, 7 figures. v2: Conclusions added and references updated. To be published in PRD

References in corpus (19)

• Observation of a new particle in the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson with the ATLAS detector at the LHC
• Observation of a new boson at a mass of 125 GeV with the CMS experiment at the LHC
• Parton distributions for the LHC
• Event generation with SHERPA 1.1
• Combined Measurement of the Higgs Boson Mass in $pp$ Collisions at $\sqrt{s}=7$ and 8 TeV with the ATLAS and CMS Experiments
• An Automated Implementation of On-Shell Methods for One-Loop Amplitudes
• Observation of the diphoton decay of the Higgs boson and measurement of its properties
• Electroweak and QCD corrections to Higgs production via vector-boson fusion at the LHC
• Measurement of Higgs boson production in the diphoton decay channel in $pp$ collisions at center-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector
• Measurement of the Higgs boson mass from the $H\to \gamma \gamma$ and $H\to Z{Z}^{\ast }\to 4\ell$ channels with the ATLAS detector using 25 fb${}^{-1}$ of $pp$ collision data
• Precise Predictions for W + 4 Jet Production at the Large Hadron Collider
• Next-to-Leading Order QCD Predictions for W+3-Jet Distributions at Hadron Colliders
• Constraints on the Higgs boson width from off-shell production and decay to Z-boson pairs
• Limitations and Opportunities of Off-Shell Coupling Measurements
• Beyond Standard Model calculations with Sherpa
• Loop induced interference effects in Higgs Boson plus two jet production at the LHC
• Mixed QCD-electroweak contributions to Higgs-plus-dijet production at the LHC
• QCD and Electroweak Interference in Higgs production by Gauge Boson Fusion
• Higgs constraints from vector boson fusion and scattering

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Exploring Peaks and Valleys in the Diphoton Spectrum
• Interference effects in new physics searches