Search for heavy resonances decaying into a $Z$ or $W$ boson and a Higgs boson in final states with leptons and $b$-jets in $139$fb${}^{-1}$ of $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13$TeV with the ATLAS detector

Abstract

This article presents a search for new resonances decaying into a $Z$ or $W$ boson and a 125 GeV Higgs boson $h$, and it targets the $\nu \bar{\nu }b\bar{b}$, ${\ell }^{+}{\ell }^{-}b\bar{b}$, or ${\ell }^{\pm }\nu b\bar{b}$ final states, where $\ell =e$ or $\mu$, in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV. The data used correspond to a total integrated luminosity of 139 fb${}^{-1}$ collected by the ATLAS detector during Run 2 of the LHC at CERN. The search is conducted by examining the reconstructed invariant or transverse mass distributions of $Zh$ or $Wh$ candidates for evidence of a localised excess in the mass range from 220 GeV to 5 TeV. No significant excess is observed and 95% confidence-level upper limits between 1.3 pb and 0.3 fb are placed on the production cross section times branching fraction of neutral and charged spin-1 resonances and CP-odd scalar bosons. These limits are converted into constraints on the parameter space of the Heavy Vector Triplet model and the two-Higgs-doublet model.

62 pages in total, 13 figures, 7 tables. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/HDBS-2020-19

References in corpus (12)

• 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
• Parton distributions for the LHC
• Matching NLO QCD computations with Parton Shower simulations: the POWHEG method
• A parton shower algorithm based on Catani-Seymour dipole factorisation
• Single-top hadroproduction in association with a W boson
• MCFM for the Tevatron and the LHC
• HistFitter software framework for statistical data analysis
• Minimal Walking Technicolor: Set Up for Collider Physics
• Soft gluon resummation for gluon-induced Higgs Strahlung
• Technicolor Walks at the LHC
• Interpolation between multi-dimensional histograms using a new non-linear moment morphing method

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Exploration at the high-energy frontier: ATLAS Run~2 searches investigating the exotic jungle beyond the Standard Model
• New physics implications of VBF searches exemplified through the Georgi-Machacek model
• Combination of searches for resonant Higgs boson pair production using $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV with the ATLAS detector
• Machine-Learning Performance on Higgs-Pair Production Associated with Dark Matter at the LHC
• LHC Signatures of the Generic Georgi-Machacek Model
• Weakly supervised anomaly detection for resonant new physics in the dijet final state using proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV with the ATLAS detector
• Discovery potential of a long-lived partner of inelastic dark matter at MATHUSLA in $U(1{)}_{X_3}$ extension of the standard model
• Interpreting the 650 GeV and 95 GeV Higgs anomalies in the next-to-two-Higgs-doublet model
• Revisiting Singlet Fermion Dark Matter with a Scalar Portal: Connecting Higgs Phenomenology and Strong Electroweak Phase Transition