Tests of BSM Higgs interactions by the combination $(κ_V^2-κ_{2V})$ in HHjj production at LHC

Abstract

In this work, we study the potential of analyzing the particular combination of $κ$ modifiers given by $κ_V^2-κ_{2V}$ to disentangle Beyond Standard Model Higgs signals in double Higgs production with two extra light jets at LHC. We use the Higgs Effective Field Theory approach, HEFT, for the gauge invariant description of these two $κ_V$ and $κ_{2V}$ parameters representing the BSM interactions of the Higgs particle with the electroweak gauge bosons, $HVV$ and $HHVV$ respectively. We illustrate the bonus of studying this particular combination $κ_V^2-κ_{2V}$ focusing in just one process, $HHjj$, instead of studying $κ_V$ and $κ_{2V}$ separately using various processes. For the detailed analysis here, we focus on the particular final state $H(\to γγ) H (\to b \bar b)jj'$, with two photons, two b-jets and two light jets, which we analyze fully including parton showering, fragmentation, hadronization and detector effects, in both signal and main background. We find that the sensitivity to $κ_V^2-κ_{2V}$ could be notably improved at the HL-LHC by the proper cuts on the final state $b \bar b γγjj'$ that select optimally the events with VBF-topology and $HH$-topology. In particular, we propose strategies based on a good isolation of $γγ$ and b-jet pairs, and focus specially on specific variables like $η_{γγ}$ and $P^T_{γγ}$ where the signal events distributions may efficiently discriminate between BSM signal versus SM background. We will show here how the high transversality of these two pairs in the signal (inherited from the high transversality of the $H$'s) is correlated with the non-vanishing value of this $(κ_V^2-κ_{2V})$ combination.