Professor Daniela Bortoletto

Abstract:

A search for non-resonant Higgs boson pair production, as predicted by the Standard Model, is presented, where one of the Higgs bosons decays via the H→bb channel and the other via one of the H→WW⁎/ZZ⁎/ττ channels. The analysis selection requires events to have at least two b-tagged jets and exactly two leptons (electrons or muons) with opposite electric charge in the final state. Candidate events consistent with Higgs boson pair production are selected using a multi-class neural network discriminant. The analysis uses 139 fb−1 of pp collision data recorded at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. An observed (expected) upper limit of 1.2 (0.9−0.3+0.4) pb is set on the non-resonant Higgs boson pair production cross-section at 95% confidence level, which is equivalent to 40 (29−9+14) times the value predicted in the Standard Model.

Abstract:

Searches for the Higgs boson decays H→ee and H→eμ are performed using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139fb−1 collected with the ATLAS detector in pp collisions at s=13 TeV at the LHC. No significant signals are observed, in agreement with the Standard Model expectation. For a Higgs boson mass of 125 GeV, the observed (expected) upper limit at the 95% confidence level on the branching fraction B(H→ee) is 3.6×10−4 (3.5×10−4) and on B(H→eμ) is 6.2×10−5 (5.9×10−5). These results represent improvements by factors of about five and six on the previous best limits on B(H→ee) and B(H→eμ) respectively.