Boosting Higgs pair production in the bbbb final state with multivariate techniques

Journal article

The measurement of Higgs pair production will be a cornerstone of the LHC program in the coming years. Double Higgs production provides a crucial window upon the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking and has a unique sensitivity to the Higgs trilinear coupling. We study the feasibility of a measurement of Higgs pair production in the b ¯bb¯b final state at the LHC. Our analysis is based on a combination of traditional cut-based methods with state-of-the-art multivariate techniques. We account for all relevant backgrounds, including the contributions from light and charm jet mis-identification, which are ultimately comparable in size to the irreducible 4b QCD background. We demonstrate the robustness of our analysis strategy in a high pileup environment. For an integrated luminosity of L = 3 ab−1 , a signal significance of S/√ B ' 3 is obtained, indicating that the b ¯bb¯b final state alone could allow for the observation of double Higgs production at the High Luminosity LHC.

Authors: Rojo, J; Behr, J; Bortoletto, D; Frost, J; Hartland, N

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Springer Verlag
• Journal: European Physical Journal C
• Volume: 76
• Issue: 386
• Publication date: 2016-07-08
• Acceptance date: 2017-06-17
• DOI: 10.1140/epjc/s10052-016-4215-5
• EISSN: 1361-6404
• ISSN: 0143-0807