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Observation of Higgs boson decay to bottom quarks

The collaboration
Phys.Rev.Lett. 121 (2018) 121801, 2018.

Abstract
The observation of the standard model (SM) Higgs boson decay to a pair of bottom quarks is presented. The main contribution to this result is from processes in which Higgs bosons are produced in association with a W or Z boson (VH), and are searched for in final states including 0, 1, or 2 charged leptons and two identified bottom quark jets. The results from the measurement of these processes in a data sample recorded by the CMS experiment in 2017, comprising 41.3 fb$^{-1}$ of proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s} =$ 13 TeV, are described. When combined with previous VH measurements using data collected at $\sqrt{s}=$ 7, 8, and 13 TeV, an excess of events is observed at $m_\mathrm{H} =$ 125.09 GeV with a significance of 4.8 standard deviations, where the expectation for the SM Higgs boson is 4.9. The corresponding measured signal strength is 1.01 $\pm$ 0.22. The combination of this result with searches by the CMS experiment for H $\to\mathrm{b\overline{b}}$ in other production processes yields an observed (expected) significance of 5.6 (5.5) standard deviations and a signal strength of 1.04 $\pm$ 0.20.

• #### Table 1

10.17182/hepdata.86132.v1/t1

Expected and observed significances, in number of standard deviations, and observed signal strengths for the VH production process with H-->b...

• #### Table 2

10.17182/hepdata.86132.v1/t2

Best-fit value of the H-->b bbar signal strength with its 1 sigma systematic (red) and total (blue) uncertainties for the...