Search for light Higgs bosons from supersymmetric cascade decays in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV

Abstract

A search is reported for pairs of light Higgs bosons (H${}_1$) produced in supersymmetric cascade decays in final states with small missing transverse momentum. A data set of LHC pp collisions collected with the CMS detector at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb${}^{-1}$ is used. The search targets events where both H${}_1$ bosons decay into $\mathrm{b}\bar{\mathrm{b}}$ pairs that are reconstructed as large-radius jets using substructure techniques. No evidence is found for an excess of events beyond the background expectations of the standard model (SM). Results from the search are interpreted in the next-to-minimal supersymmetric extension of the SM, where a "singlino" of small mass leads to squark and gluino cascade decays that can predominantly end in a highly Lorentz-boosted singlet-like H${}_1$ and a singlino-like neutralino of small transverse momentum. Upper limits are set on the product of the squark or gluino pair production cross section and the square of the $\mathrm{b}\bar{\mathrm{b}}$ branching fraction of the H${}_1$ in a benchmark model containing almost mass-degenerate gluinos and light-flavour squarks. Under the assumption of an SM-like H${}_1$ $\to$ $\mathrm{b}\bar{\mathrm{b}}$ branching fraction, H${}_1$ bosons with masses in the range 40-120 GeV arising from the decays of squarks or gluinos with a mass of 1200 to 2500 GeV are excluded at 95% confidence level.

Replaced with the published version. Added the journal reference and the DOI. All the figures and tables, including additional supplementary figures, can be found at http://cms-results.web.cern.ch/cms-results/public-results/publications/HIG-20-018 (CMS Public Pages)

References in corpus (19)

• The automated computation of tree-level and next-to-leading order differential cross sections, and their matching to parton shower simulations
• An Introduction to PYTHIA 8.2
• Matching NLO QCD computations with Parton Shower simulations: the POWHEG method
• Comparative study of various algorithms for the merging of parton showers and matrix elements in hadronic collisions
• Particle-flow reconstruction and global event description with the CMS detector
• Tuning PYTHIA 8.1: the Monash 2013 Tune
• The CMS trigger system
• Jet energy scale and resolution in the CMS experiment in pp collisions at 8 TeV
• FEWZ 2.0: A code for hadronic Z production at next-to-next-to-leading order
• Threshold resummation for squark-antisquark and gluino-pair production at the LHC
• Soft gluon resummation for the production of gluino-gluino and squark-antisquark pairs at the LHC
• Pileup Per Particle Identification
• NNLL-fast: predictions for coloured supersymmetric particle production at the LHC with threshold and Coulomb resummation
• Searches for electroweak neutralino and chargino production in channels with Higgs, Z, and W bosons in pp collisions at 8 TeV
• NNLL resummation for squark and gluino production at the LHC
• NMSSM with a singlino LSP: possible challenges for searches for supersymmetry at the LHC
• The constrained next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model
• Search for higgsinos decaying to two Higgs bosons and missing transverse momentum in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=$ 13 TeV
• Excessive Higgs pair production with little MET from squarks and gluinos in the NMSSM

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Interplay of Traditional Methods and Machine Learning Algorithms for Tagging Boosted Objects
• Machine-Learning Performance on Higgs-Pair Production Associated with Dark Matter at the LHC