Since the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, detailed studies of its properties have been ongoing. Besides its mass, its width—related to its lifetime—is an important parameter. One way to determine this quantity is to measure its off-shell production, where the Higgs boson mass is far away from its nominal value, and relating it to its on-shell production, where the mass is close to the nominal value. Here we report evidence for such off-shell contributions to the production cross-section of two Z bosons with data from the CMS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. We constrain the total rate of the off-shell Higgs boson contribution beyond the Z boson pair production threshold, relative to its standard model expectation, to the interval [0.0061, 2.0] at the 95% confidence level. The scenario with no off-shell contribution is excluded at a p-value of 0.0003 (3.6 standard deviations). We measure the width of the Higgs boson as ΓH=3.2−1.7+2.4MeV, in agreement with the standard model expectation of 4.1 MeV. In addition, we set constraints on anomalous Higgs boson couplings to W and Z boson pairs.

Tumasyan, A., Adam, W., Andrejkovic, J., Bergauer, T., Chatterjee, S., Damanakis, K., et al. (2022). Measurement of the Higgs boson width and evidence of its off-shell contributions to ZZ production. NATURE PHYSICS, 18(11), 1329-1334 [10.1038/s41567-022-01682-0].

Measurement of the Higgs boson width and evidence of its off-shell contributions to ZZ production

Benaglia A.;Boldrini G.;Brivio F.;Cetorelli F.;De Guio F.;Dinardo M. E.;Ghezzi A.;Govoni P.;Guzzi L.;Lucchini M. T.;Malberti M.;Massironi A.;Moroni L.;Paganoni M.;Pinolini B. S.;Ragazzi S.;de Fatis T. T.;Valsecchi D.;Zuolo D.;Ortona G.;Gerosa R.;
2022

Abstract

Since the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, detailed studies of its properties have been ongoing. Besides its mass, its width—related to its lifetime—is an important parameter. One way to determine this quantity is to measure its off-shell production, where the Higgs boson mass is far away from its nominal value, and relating it to its on-shell production, where the mass is close to the nominal value. Here we report evidence for such off-shell contributions to the production cross-section of two Z bosons with data from the CMS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. We constrain the total rate of the off-shell Higgs boson contribution beyond the Z boson pair production threshold, relative to its standard model expectation, to the interval [0.0061, 2.0] at the 95% confidence level. The scenario with no off-shell contribution is excluded at a p-value of 0.0003 (3.6 standard deviations). We measure the width of the Higgs boson as ΓH=3.2−1.7+2.4MeV, in agreement with the standard model expectation of 4.1 MeV. In addition, we set constraints on anomalous Higgs boson couplings to W and Z boson pairs.
Articolo in rivista - Articolo scientifico
Higgs boson; Its standards; Large Hadron Collider; Large-hadron colliders; Measurements of; Nominal values; Pair production; Production cross section; Property; Z Bosons
English
20-ott-2022
2022
18
11
1329
1334
open
Tumasyan, A., Adam, W., Andrejkovic, J., Bergauer, T., Chatterjee, S., Damanakis, K., et al. (2022). Measurement of the Higgs boson width and evidence of its off-shell contributions to ZZ production. NATURE PHYSICS, 18(11), 1329-1334 [10.1038/s41567-022-01682-0].
File in questo prodotto:
File Dimensione Formato  
10281-429578_VoR.pdf

accesso aperto

Tipologia di allegato: Publisher’s Version (Version of Record, VoR)
Licenza: Creative Commons
Dimensione 3.66 MB
Formato Adobe PDF
3.66 MB Adobe PDF Visualizza/Apri

I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/10281/429578
Citazioni
  • Scopus 40
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? 30
Social impact