CMS-PAS-HIG-21-012

CMS-PAS-HIG-21-012
Inclusive search for a boosted Higgs boson and an observation of the Z boson decaying to charm quark pair in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s} = $ 13 TeV
CMS Collaboration
May 2022

Abstract: A search for the standard model Higgs (H) boson produced with transverse momentum greater than 450 GeV and decaying to charm quark-antiquark pairs ($\mathrm{c\bar{c}}$) is performed using proton-proton collision data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC at $\sqrt{s}=$ 13 TeV. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb$^{-1}$. The search is inclusive in H production mode. Highly Lorentz-boosted H decaying to $\mathrm{c\bar{c}}$ are reconstructed as single large-radius jets, and are identified using a dedicated charm tagging technique based on a deep neural network. The method is validated with the $\mathrm{Z}\to \mathrm{c\bar{c}}$ decay process, which is observed for the first time in the Z+jets production mode at a hadron collider with a significance of well over 5 standard deviations and a signal strength of 0.91$_{-0.15}^{+0.18}$ (exp.) $\pm$ 0.7 (th.) $\pm$ 0.05 (stat.) relative to the standard model prediction. A 95% confidence level observed (expected) upper limit is set on the $\mathrm{H}\to \mathrm{c\bar{c}}$ signal strength of 45 (38) times the standard model prediction.
Links: CDS record (PDF) ; CADI line (restricted) ; These preliminary results are superseded in this paper, Submitted to PRL. The superseded preliminary plots can be found here.

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