Search for Higgs boson decays into a pair of pseudoscalar particles in the bbμμ final state with the ATLAS detector in pp collisions at √s = 13 TeV

ATLAS Collaboration

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Abstract

This paper presents a search for decays of the Higgs boson with a mass of 125 GeV into a pair of new pseudoscalar particles, H → aa, where one a-boson decays into a b-quark pair and the other into a muon pair. The search uses 139 fb-1 of proton-proton collision data at a center-of-mass energy of √s = 13 TeV recorded between 2015 and 2018 by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. A narrow dimuon resonance is searched for in the invariant mass spectrum between 16 GeV and 62 GeV. The largest excess of events above the Standard Model backgrounds is observed at a dimuon invariant mass of 52 GeV and corresponds to a local (global) significance of 3.3σ (1.7σ). Upper limits at 95% confidence level are placed on the branching ratio of the Higgs boson to the bbμμ final state, B(H aa bbμμ), and are in the range 0.2-4.0 × b10-4, depending on the signal mass hypothesis.

Original languageEnglish
Article number012006
Pages (from-to)012006-1-012006-29
Number of pages29
JournalPhysical Review D
Volume105
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2022
Externally publishedYes

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