Abstract
A search is presented for a heavy pseudoscalar boson text {A} decaying to a Z boson and a Higgs boson with mass of 125,text {GeV}. In the final state considered, the Higgs boson decays to a bottom quark and antiquark, and the Z boson decays either into a pair of electrons, muons, or neutrinos. The analysis is performed using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9,text {fb}^{-1} collected in 2016 by the CMS experiment at the LHC from proton–proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13,text {Te}text {V}. The data are found to be consistent with the background expectations. Exclusion limits are set in the context of two-Higgs-doublet models in the text {A} boson mass range between 225 and 1000,text {GeV}.
Highlights
The discovery of a Higgs boson at the CERN LHC [1,2] and the measurement of its mass, spin, parity, and couplings [3,4] raises the question of whether the Higgs boson sector consists of only one scalar doublet, which results in a single physical Higgs boson as expected in the standard model (SM), or whether additional bosons are involved in electroweak (EW) symmetry breaking
This paper describes a search for a heavy pseudoscalar A boson that decays to a Z and an h boson, both on-shell, with the Z boson decaying to + − or to a pair of neutrinos, and the h boson to bb
These results extend the search for a 2HDM pseudoscalar boson A for mass up to 1 TeV, which tan β
Summary
The discovery of a Higgs boson at the CERN LHC [1,2] and the measurement of its mass, spin, parity, and couplings [3,4] raises the question of whether the Higgs boson sector consists of only one scalar doublet, which results in a single physical Higgs boson as expected in the standard model (SM), or whether additional bosons are involved in electroweak (EW) symmetry breaking. At small tan β values the heavy pseudoscalar boson A may decay with a large branching fraction to a Z and an h boson, if kinematically allowed [5] These models can be probed either with indirect searches, by measuring the cross section and couplings of the SM Higgs boson [9], or by performing a direct search for an A boson. Selections based on multivariate discriminators, exploiting event variables such as angular distributions, are used to optimize the signal efficiency and background rejection This search is sensitive to a pseudoscalar A boson with a mass smaller than twice the top quark mass and for small
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