CMS searches for Higgs boson partner up to 4 trillion TeV

Researchers with the CMS experiment have pushed the search for a potential partner to the Higgs boson to a high energy scale, examining particles up to four trillion electronvolts. This search uniquely focused on a decay signature involving two photons and two bottom quarks, a combination previously unexplored in high-energy particle hunts.

Jin Wang, a CMS physicist at the Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, notes that despite finding no excess beyond the Standard Model, the team has narrowed the search for an extended Higgs sector and set new upper limits on potential particle interactions.

Two-Photon Search Extends Higgs Boson Partner Hunt to 4 TeV

This search examined a previously unexplored area in the hunt for an extended Higgs sector, extending beyond the 1 TeV threshold of prior investigations. The team analyzed the complete proton-proton collision dataset recorded by CMS from 2016 to 2018, setting upper limits on the rate of potential particle interactions at each tested mass point. The experiment’s sensitivity stems from its ability to detect a rare decay; only about two in every thousand Higgs bosons decay into two photons.

CMS reconstructs the photon pair’s mass with excellent resolution, allowing researchers to identify a potential signal as a narrow peak amidst background noise. This approach prioritizes clarity over a high yield of events, a crucial consideration when searching for elusive particles.

Two distinct decay scenarios were considered, accounting for differing mass relationships between the potential new particles, X and Y, and employing a graph neural network called ParticleNet to identify specific signatures. “The two-photon channel is one of our sharpest tools for resonance searches: the decay is rare, but its narrow mass peak can expose a small signal above a smooth background.” Extending heavy resonance searches beyond 1 TeV with this channel closes a gap in the experimental map.

Combining these new two-photon results with previous searches focused on Higgs boson decays into bottom quarks or tau leptons further refines the constraints on potential new physics. The current search, limited by the size of the analyzed dataset, will benefit from the larger Run 3 datasets, promising even sharper resolution in the search for these rare decays.

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