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Search for decays of the 125 GeV Higgs boson into a Z boson and a ρ or ϕ meson
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Search for decays of the 125 GeV Higgs boson into a Z boson and a ρ or ϕ meson

CMS collaboration, Florencia Canelli, Benjamin Kilminster, Lea Caminada, Cristina Botta, Thea Aarrestad, Danyyl Brzhechko, Annapaoloa Cosa, Riccardo Del Burgo, Silvio Donato, …
Journal of high energy physics : JHEP, Vol.2020(11), 39
11/10/2020
DOI: 10.1007/JHEP11(2020)039
url
https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP11(2020)039View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

Decays of the 125 GeV Higgs boson into a Z boson and a ρ0(770) or ϕ(1020) meson are searched for using proton-proton collision data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC at s√ = 13 TeV. The analysed data set corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 137 fb−1. Events are selected in which the Z boson decays into a pair of electrons or a pair of muons, and the ρ and ϕ mesons decay into pairs of pions and kaons, respectively. No significant excess above the background model is observed. As different polarization states are possible for the decay products of the Z boson and ρ or ϕ mesons, affecting the signal acceptance, scenarios in which the decays are longitudinally or transversely polarized are considered. Upper limits at the 95% confidence level on the Higgs boson branching fractions into Zρ and Zϕ are determined to be 1.04–1.31% and 0.31–0.40%, respectively, where the ranges reflect the considered polarization scenarios; these values are 740–940 and 730–950 times larger than the respective standard model expectations. These results constitute the first experimental limits on the two decay channels.

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