Since the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, detailed studies of its properties have been ongoing. Besides its mass, its width - related to its lifetime - is an important parameter. One way to determine this quantity is by measuring its off-shell production, where the Higgs boson mass is far away from its nominal value, and relating it to its on-shell production, where the mass is close to the nominal value. Here, we report evidence for such off-shell contributions to the production cross section of two Z bosons with data from the CMS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. We constrain the total rate of the off-shell Higgs boson contribution beyond the Z boson pair production threshold, relative to its standard model expectation, to the interval [0.0061, 2.0] at 95% confidence level. The scenario with no off-shell contribution is excluded at a $p$-value of 0.0003 (3.6 standard deviations). We measure the width of the Higgs boson as $\Gamma_{\mathrm{H}}$ = 3.2 $_{-1.7}^{+2.4}$ MeV, in agreement with the standard model expectation of 4.1 MeV. In addition, we set constraints on anomalous Higgs boson couplings to W and Z boson pairs.
GGsm vs -2dNLL (SM-like (f_{ai}=0) observed)
GGsm vs -2dNLL (f_{a2} (u) observed)
GGsm vs -2dNLL (f_{a3} (u) observed)
A search for a heavy Higgs boson in the H to WW and H to ZZ decay channels is reported. The search is based upon proton-proton collision data samples corresponding to an integrated luminosity of up to 5.1 inverse femtobarns at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV and up to 19.7 inverse femtobarns at sqrt(s) = 8 TeV, recorded by the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC. Several final states of the H to WW and H to ZZ decays are analyzed. The combined upper limit at the 95% confidence level on the product of the cross section and branching fraction exclude a Higgs boson with standard model-like couplings and decays in the range 145 < m[H] < 1000 GeV. We also interpret the results in the context of an electroweak singlet extension of the standard model.
Upper limits at 95\% CL on the cross section for a heavy Higgs boson decaying to a pair of W bosons as a function of its mass and its width relative to a SM-like Higgs boson.
Upper limits at 95\% CL on the cross section for a heavy Higgs boson decaying to a pair of Z bosons as a function of its mass and its width relative to a SM-like Higgs boson.
Upper limits at 95% CL on the cross section for a heavy Higgs boson as a function of its mass and its width relative to a SM-like Higgs boson. Both, gluon-gluon fusion and VBF production processes are combined, assuming a SM-like ratio between the two.
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