https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-016-3911-5
Regular Article - Experimental Physics
Model-independent measurement of the e
e
HZ cross section at a future ee linear collider using hadronic Z decays
Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge, CB3 0HE, UK
* e-mail: thomson@hep.phy.cam.ac.uk
Received:
10
September
2015
Accepted:
26
January
2016
Published online:
13
February
2016
A future 
collider, such as the ILC or CLIC, would allow the Higgs sector to be probed with a precision significantly beyond that achievable at the High-Luminosity LHC. A central part of the Higgs programme at an collider is the model-independent determination of the absolute Higgs couplings to fermions and to gauge bosons. Here the measurement of the 
Higgsstrahlung cross section, using the recoil mass technique, sets the absolute scale for all Higgs coupling measurements. Previous studies have considered 
with 
, where 
. In this paper it is shown for the first time that a near model-independent recoil mass technique can be extended to the hadronic decays of the 
boson. Because the branching ratio for 
is approximately ten times greater than for , this method is statistically more powerful than using the leptonic decays. For an integrated luminosity of 500 
at a centre-of-mass energy of 
at CLIC, can be measured to 
using the hadronic recoil mass technique. A similar precision is found for the ILC operating at . The centre-of-mass dependence of this measurement technique is discussed, arguing for the initial operation of a future linear collider at just above the top-pair production threshold.
© The Author(s), 2016
