CMS-PAS-HIG-21-008

CMS-PAS-HIG-21-008
Direct search for the standard model Higgs boson decaying to a charm quark-antiquark pair
CMS Collaboration
March 2022

Abstract: A search for $\mathrm{H}\to \mathrm{c}\bar{\mathrm{c}}$ in associated VH production with leptonically decaying V (W or Z) boson is performed with 138 fb $^{-1}$ of proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=$ 13 TeV in the CMS experiment. Novel charm jet identification and analysis techniques are used. A search for Z $\to \mathrm{c}\bar{\mathrm{c}}$ in VZ events is used to validate the strategy and yields a first observation at a hadron collider with a significance of 5.7 standard deviations. The analysis yields $\sigma(\mathrm{VH})\mathcal{B}(\mathrm{H}\to \mathrm{c}\bar{\mathrm{c}}) <$ 0.94 pb at 95% CL. For $\kappa_{\mathrm{c}}$ , the Higgs-charm Yukawa coupling modifier, the observed 95% CL interval (expected upper limit) is 1.1 $< \|\kappa_{\mathrm{c}}\| <$ 5.5 ( $\|\kappa_{\mathrm{c}}\| <$ 3.4) -- the most stringent to date.
Links: CDS record (PDF) ; Physics Briefing ; CADI line (restricted) ; These preliminary results are superseded in this paper, PRL 131 (2023) 061801. The superseded preliminary plots can be found here.

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