Eur. Phys. J. C (2015) 75: 49
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-015-3279-y

Letter

Searching for degenerate Higgs bosons

A profile likelihood ratio method to test for mass-degenerate states in the presence of incomplete data and uncertainties

¹ PH Department, CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
² Helsinki Institute of Physics, Helsinki, Finland

^* e-mail: andre.david@cern.ch

Received: 23 September 2014
Accepted: 20 January 2015
Published online: 3 February 2015

Abstract

Using the likelihood ratio test statistic, we present a method which can be employed to test the hypothesis of a single Higgs boson using the matrix of measured signal strengths. This method can be applied in the presence of incomplete data and takes into account uncertainties on the measurements. The value against the hypothesis of a single Higgs boson is defined from the expected distribution of the test statistic, generated using pseudo-experiments. The applicability of the likelihood-based test is demonstrated using numerical examples with uncertainties and missing matrix elements.