Combined search for anomalous pseudoscalar HVV couplings in VH(H→bb‾) production and H → VV decay


Khachatryan V., Sirunyan A., Tumasyan A., Adam W., Asilar E., Bergauer T., ...More

Physics Letters, Section B: Nuclear, Elementary Particle and High-Energy Physics, vol.759, pp.672-696, 2016 (SCI-Expanded) identifier identifier

Abstract

A search for anomalous pseudoscalar couplings of the Higgs boson H to electroweak vector bosons V (=W or Z) in a sample of proton–proton collision events corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 18.9 fb−1 at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV is presented. Events consistent with the topology of associated VH production, where the Higgs boson decays to a pair of bottom quarks and the vector boson decays leptonically, are analyzed. The consistency of data with a potential pseudoscalar contribution to the HVV interaction, expressed by the effective pseudoscalar cross section fractions fa3 , is assessed by means of profile likelihood scans. Results are given for the VH channels alone and for a combined analysis of the VH and previously published H→VV channels. Under certain assumptions, fa3 ZZ>0.0034 is excluded at 95% confidence level in the combination. Scenarios in which these assumptions are relaxed are also considered.