Further investigation of the model-independent probe of heavy neutral Higgs bosons at LHC Run 2
- Received Date: 2015-06-29
- Available Online: 2016-02-20
Abstract: In one of our previous papers, we provided general, effective Higgs interactions for the lightest Higgs boson h (SM-like) and a heavier neutral Higgs boson H based on the effective Lagrangian formulation up to the dim-6 interactions, and then proposed two sensitive processes for probing H. We showed in several examples that the resonance peak of H and its dim-6 effective coupling constants (ECC) can be detected at LHC Run 2 with reasonable integrated luminosity. In this paper, we further perform a more thorough study of the most sensitive process, pp→VH*→VVV, providing information about the relations between the 1σ,3σ,5σ statistical significance and the corresponding ranges of the Higgs ECC for an integrated luminosity of 100 fb-1. These results have two useful applications in LHC Run 2: (A) realizing the experimental determination of the ECC in the dim-6 interactions if H is found and, (B) obtaining the theoretical exclusion bounds if H is not found. Some alternative processes sensitive for certain ranges of the ECC are also analyzed.