Search for the Higgs boson produced in association with a W boson and decaying to four b-quarks via two spin-zero particles in pp collisions at 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Abstract

This paper presents a dedicated search for exotic decays of the Higgs boson to a pair of new spin-zero particles, H -> aa, where the particle a decays to b-quarks and has a mass in the range of 20-60 GeV. The search is performed in events where the Higgs boson is produced in associationwith aW boson, giving rise to a signature of a lepton (electron or muon), missing transverse momentum, and multiple jets from b-quark decays. The analysis is based on the full dataset of pp collisions at root s = 13 TeV recorded in 2015 by theATLAS detector at theCERNLargeHadron Collider, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3.2 fb(-1). No significant excess of events above the Standard Model prediction is observed, and a 95% confidence-level upper limit is derived for the product of the production cross section for pp -> WH times the branching ratio for the decay H -> aa -> 4b. The upper limit ranges from 6.2 pb for an a-boson mass m(a) = 20 GeV to 1.5 pb for m(a) = 60 GeV. ; ATLAS Collaboration, for complete list of authors http://dx.doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-016-4418-9 Funding: We thank CERN for the very successful operation of the LHC, as well as the support staff from our institutions without whom ATLAS could not be operated efficiently. We acknowledge the support of ANPCyT, Argentina; YerPhI, Armenia; ARC, Australia; BMWFW and FWF, Austria; ANAS, Azerbaijan; SSTC, Belarus; CNPq and FAPESP, Brazil; NSERC, NRC and CFI, Canada; CERN; CONICYT, Chile; CAS, MOST and NSFC, China; COLCIENCIAS, Colombia; MSMT CR, MPO CR and VSC CR, Czech Republic; DNRF and DNSRC, Denmark; IN2P3-CNRS, CEA-DSM/IRFU, France; GNSF, Georgia; BMBF, HGF, and MPG, Germany; GSRT, Greece; RGC, Hong Kong SAR, China; ISF, I-CORE and Benoziyo Center, Israel; INFN, Italy; MEXT and JSPS, Japan; CNRST, Morocco; FOM and NWO, Netherlands; RCN, Norway; MNiSW and NCN, Poland; FCT, Portugal; MNE/IFA, Romania; MES of Russia and NRC KI, Russian Federation; JINR; MESTD, Serbia; MSSR, Slovakia; ARRS and MIZS, Slovenia; DST/NRF, South Africa; MINECO, Spain; SRC and Wallenberg Foundation, Sweden; SERI, SNSF and Cantons of Bern and Geneva, Switzerland; MOST, Taiwan; TAEK, Turkey; STFC, United Kingdom; DOE and NSF, United States of America. In addition, individual groups and members have received support from BCKDF, the Canada Council, CANARIE, CRC, Compute Canada, FQRNT, and the Ontario Innovation Trust, Canada; EPLANET, ERC, FP7, Horizon 2020 and Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions, European Union; Investissements d'Avenir Labex and Idex, ANR, Region Auvergne and Fondation Partager le Savoir, France; DFG and AvH Foundation, Germany; Herakleitos, Thales and Aristeia programmes co-financed by EU-ESF and the Greek NSRF; BSF, GIF and Minerva, Israel; BRF, Norway; Generalitat de Catalunya, Generalitat Valenciana, Spain; the Royal Society and Leverhulme Trust, United Kingdom. The crucial computing support from all WLCG partners is acknowledged gratefully, in particular from CERN, the ATLAS Tier-1 facilities at TRIUMF (Canada), NDGF (Denmark, Norway, Sweden), CC-IN2P3 (France), KIT/GridKA (Germany), INFN-CNAF (Italy), NL-T1 (Netherlands), PIC (Spain), ASGC (Taiwan), RAL (UK) and BNL (USA), the Tier-2 facilities worldwide and large non-WLCG resource providers. Major contributors of computing resources are listed in Ref. [103].