Search for the Higgs boson decays to a ${\rho }^0$, $\varphi$, or K${}^{\ast 0}$ meson and a photon in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV

Abstract

Three rare decay processes of the Higgs boson to a $\rho$(770)${}^0$, $\varphi$(1020), or K${}^{\ast }$(892)${}^0$ meson and a photon are searched for using $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV proton-proton collision data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC. Events are selected assuming the mesons decay into a pair of charged pions, a pair of charged kaons, or a charged kaon and pion, respectively. Depending on the Higgs boson production mode, different triggering and reconstruction techniques are adopted. The analyzed data sets correspond to integrated luminosities up to 138 fb${}^{-1}$, depending on the reconstructed final state. After combining various data sets and categories, no significant excess above the background expectations is observed. Upper limits at 95% confidence level on the Higgs boson branching fractions into $\rho$(770)${}^0$$\gamma$, $\varphi$(1020)$\gamma$, and K${}^{\ast }$(892)${}^0\gamma$ are determined to be 3.7 $\times$ 10${}^{-4}$, 3.0 $\times$ 10${}^{-4}$, and 3.0 $\times$ 10${}^{-4}$, respectively. In case of the $\rho$(770)${}^0$$\gamma$ and $\varphi$(1020)$\gamma$ channels, these are the most stringent experimental limits to date.

Replaced with the published version. Added the journal reference and the DOI. All the figures and tables can be found at http://cms-results.web.cern.ch/cms-results/public-results/publications/HIG-23-005 (CMS Public Pages)

References in corpus (9)

• 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
• 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
• Particle-flow reconstruction and global event description with the CMS detector
• Description and performance of track and primary-vertex reconstruction with the CMS tracker
• Jet energy scale and resolution in the CMS experiment in pp collisions at 8 TeV
• An Exclusive Window onto Higgs Yukawa Couplings
• Handling uncertainties in background shapes: the discrete profiling method

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Rare few-body decays of the Standard Model Higgs boson