Inferring the nature of the boson at 125–126 GeV

Abstract

The presence of a bosonic resonance near 125 GeV has been firmly established at the Large Hadron Collider. Understanding the exact nature of this boson is a priority. The task now is to verify whether the boson is indeed the scalar Higgs as proposed in the Standard Model of particle physics, or something more esoteric as proposed in the plethora of extensions to the Standard Model. This requires a verification that the boson is a $J^{PC}=0^{++}$ state with couplings precisely as predicted by the Standard Model. Since a non Standard Model boson can in some cases mimic the Standard Model Higgs in its couplings to gauge bosons, it is essential to rule out any anomalous behavior in its gauge couplings. We present a step by step methodology to determine the properties of this resonance without making any assumptions about its couplings. We present the analysis in terms of uni-angular distributions which lead to angular asymmetries that allow for the extraction of the couplings of the 125-126 GeV resonance to Z bosons. We show analytically and numerically, that these asymmetries can unambiguously confirm whether the new boson is indeed the Standard Model Higgs boson.