Search for exotic Higgs boson decays H $\to$ $\mathcal{AA}$ with $\mathcal{AA}$ $\to$ $\gamma \gamma$ in events with a semi-merged topology in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV

Abstract

A search for exotic Higgs boson decays H $\to$ $\mathcal{AA}$, with $\mathcal{A}$ $\to$ $\gamma \gamma$ is presented, using events with a semi-merged topology. One of the hypothetical particles, $\mathcal{A}$, is assumed to decay promptly into a semi-merged diphoton system reconstructed as a single photon-like object, while the other $\mathcal{A}$ decays into two resolved photons. The search is performed using proton-proton collision data collected by the CMS experiment at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb${}^{-1}$. The data agree with the standard model background expectation. Upper limits are set on the product of the Higgs boson production cross section and the branching fraction, $\sigma$(pp $\to$ H) $\mathcal{B}$(H $\to$ $\mathcal{AA}$ $\to$ 4$\gamma$), which range from 0.264 to 0.005 pb at 95% confidence level, for $\mathcal{A}$ masses in the range 1 $<$ $m_{\mathcal{A}}$ $<$ 15 GeV. These limits are the most stringent to date in the 1$-$5 GeV $m_{\mathcal{A}}$ range.

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/EXO-24-025 (CMS Public Pages)

References in corpus (18)

• 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
• Asymptotic formulae for likelihood-based tests of new physics
• Confidence Level Computation for Combining Searches with Small Statistics
• Parton distributions from high-precision collider data
• Description and performance of track and primary-vertex reconstruction with the CMS tracker
• Collider Probes of Axion-Like Particles
• Illuminating Dark Photons with High-Energy Colliders
• Exotic Decays of the 125 GeV Higgs Boson
• The Strong CP Problem and Axions
• Performance of photon reconstruction and identification with the CMS detector in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 8 TeV
• Energy Flow Networks: Deep Sets for Particle Jets
• The CMS statistical analysis and combination tool: COMBINE
• Supervised Jet Clustering with Graph Neural Networks for Lorentz Boosted Bosons
• End-to-End Jet Classification of Quarks and Gluons with the CMS Open Data
• Mini-AOD: A New Analysis Data Format for CMS
• Search for light long-lived particles decaying to displaced jets in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13.6 TeV
• A simulation study to distinguish prompt photon from ${\pi }^0$ and beam halo in a granular calorimeter using deep networks