Abstract
The searches for H→WW events at the LHC use data driven techniques for estimating the qq¯→WW background, by normalizing the background cross section to data in a control region. We investigate the possibility that new physics sources which mainly contribute to the control region lead to an overestimate of Standard Model backgrounds to the Higgs boson signal and, thus, to an underestimate of the H→WW signal. A supersymmetric scenario with heavy squarks and gluinos but charginos in the 200 to 300 GeV region and somewhat lighter sleptons can lead to such a situation.
Highlights
Among the Higgs search channels at the LHC, the decay into weak boson pairs is important, because the tree level couplings of the Higgs boson to W W and ZZ allow to positively identify a scalar state as being associated with the vacuum expectation value which breaks the electroweak gauge symmetry
The size of the background is measured in this control region and the corresponding value in the signal region, at small m, is extrapolated using the shape of the distribution determined by a Monte Carlo simulation for Standard Model (SM) W pair production
The relative contribution of the SUSY processes to the signal region is clearly much smaller than the contribution to the control region. This scenario is potentially dangerous for the data-driven estimation of the qq → W W background: If the BSM physics could not be identified, the W W prediction in the signal region would be rescaled by/σCW W, (13)
Summary
Among the Higgs search channels at the LHC, the decay into weak boson pairs is important, because the tree level couplings of the Higgs boson to W W and ZZ allow to positively identify a scalar state as being associated with the vacuum expectation value which breaks the electroweak gauge symmetry. A Higgs boson produced via gluon fusion with subsequent decay into leptonically decaying W bosons is especially searched for, at the present time, because this channel is expected to produce the largest sample of H → V V events at the LHC. Can new physics events, which typically are hard and tend to preferentially populate the large m region, significantly enhance the size of the background measured in the control region, while contributing relatively less than the SM W pair production to the signal region? SUSY processes contributing as background have been discussed before with respect to calibration processes [4] and to Higgs boson searches within vector boson fusion where the Higgs boson decays into two tau leptons or two W bosons [5]. In [6] SUSY processes as a possible background in the signal region of Higgs boson searches have been considered
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