The mono-Higgs + MET signal at the Large Hadron Collider: a study on the and final states

Debabrata Bhowmik; Jayita Lahiri; Satyaki Bhattacharya; Biswarup Mukhopadhyaya; Ritesh K. Singh

doi:10.1140/epjc/s10052-022-10828-6

2024 Impact factor 4.8

Particles and Fields

Open Access

Eur. Phys. J. C (2022) 82: 914
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-022-10828-6

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

The mono-Higgs + MET signal at the Large Hadron Collider: a study on the $γ γ$ $\gamma \gamma$ and $b \bar{b}$ $b\bar{b}$ final states

Debabrata Bhowmik¹, Jayita Lahiri², Satyaki Bhattacharya¹, Biswarup Mukhopadhyaya³ and Ritesh K. Singh³^e

¹ High Energy Nuclear and Particle Physics Division, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, HBNI, 1/AF Bidhannagar, 700064, Kolkata, India
² Regional Centre for Accelerator-based Particle Physics, Harish-Chandra Research Institute, HBNI, Chhatnag Road, Jhunsi, 211019, Allahabad, India
³ Department of Physical Sciences, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata, 741246, Mohanpur, India

^e ritesh.singh@iiserkol.ac.in

Received: 28 April 2022
Accepted: 20 September 2022
Published online: 14 October 2022

Abstract

We investigate the potential of the channel mono-Higgs + missing transverse energy (MET) in yielding signals of dark matter at the high-luminosity Large Hadron Collider (LHC). As illustration, a Higgs-portal scenario has been chosen, where an extension of the Standard Model with a real scalar gauge-singlet which serves as a dark matter candidate. The phenomenological viability of this scenario has been ensured by postulating the existence of dimension-6 operators that enable cancellation in certain amplitudes for elastic scattering of dark matter in direct search experiments. These operators are found to have non-negligible contribution to the mono-Higgs signal. Thereafter, we carry out a detailed analysis of this signal, with the accompanying MET providing a useful handle in suppressing backgrounds. Signals for the Higgs decaying into both the diphoton and $b \bar{b}$ $b{\bar{b}}$ channels have been studied. A cut-based simulation is presented first, optimizing over various event selection criteria. This is followed by a demonstration of how the statistical significance can be improved through analyses based on boosted decision trees and artificial neural networks.

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