Search for dark matter produced in association with a Higgs boson decaying to a $\tau$ lepton pair in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV

Abstract

A search for dark matter particles produced in association with a Higgs boson decaying into a pair of $\tau$ leptons is performed using data collected in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV with the CMS detector. The analysis is based on a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 101 fb${}^{-1}$ collected in 2017$-$2018. No significant excess over the expected standard model background is observed. This result is interpreted within the frameworks of the 2HDM+a and baryonic Z${}^{\prime }$ benchmark simplified models. The 2HDM+a model is a type-II two-Higgs-doublet model featuring a heavy pseudoscalar with an additional light pseudoscalar. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set on the product of the production cross section and the branching fraction for each of these two simplified models. Heavy pseudoscalar boson masses between 400 and 700 GeV are excluded for a light pseudoscalar mass of 100 GeV. For the baryonic Z${}^{\prime }$ model, a statistical combination is made with an earlier search based on a data set of 36 fb${}^{-1}$ collected in 2016. In this model, Z${}^{\prime }$ boson masses up to 1050 GeV are excluded for a dark matter particle mass of 1 GeV.

arXiv commentReplaced 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/SUS-23-012 (CMS Public Pages)

References in corpus (32)

• The automated computation of tree-level and next-to-leading order differential cross sections, and their matching to parton shower simulations
• The anti-k_t jet clustering algorithm
• An Introduction to PYTHIA 8.2
• Particle Dark Matter: Evidence, Candidates and Constraints
• FastJet user manual
• Asymptotic formulae for likelihood-based tests of new physics
• A general framework for implementing NLO calculations in shower Monte Carlo programs: the POWHEG BOX
• Matching NLO QCD computations with Parton Shower simulations: the POWHEG method
• Confidence Level Computation for Combining Searches with Small Statistics
• Parton distributions from high-precision collider data
• Dark Matter Candidates from Particle Physics and Methods of Detection
• Top++: a program for the calculation of the top-pair cross-section at hadron colliders
• Comparative study of various algorithms for the merging of parton showers and matrix elements in hadronic collisions
• Tuning PYTHIA 8.1: the Monash 2013 Tune
• The Minimal Model of Nonbaryonic Dark Matter: A Singlet Scalar
• Vector boson pair production at the LHC
• Merging meets matching in MC@NLO
• Electroweak gauge boson production at hadron colliders through O(alpha_s^2)
• Weak lensing mass reconstruction of the interacting cluster 1E0657-558: Direct evidence for the existence of dark matter
• Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV
• Dark Matter Benchmark Models for Early LHC Run-2 Searches: Report of the ATLAS/CMS Dark Matter Forum
• NLO Higgs boson production via gluon fusion matched with shower in POWHEG
• $W^{+}{W}^{-}$ production at hadron colliders in NNLO QCD
• Jet pair production in POWHEG
• Jet Flavour Classification Using DeepJet
• Heavy Dark Matter Through the Higgs Portal
• Simplified dark matter models with two Higgs doublets: I. Pseudoscalar mediators
• Dark Matter Searches with Astroparticle Data
• Mono-Higgs: a new collider probe of dark matter
• The CMS statistical analysis and combination tool: COMBINE
• Mono-Higgs Detection of Dark Matter at the LHC
• Searching for dark matter at LHC with Mono-Higgs production