Search for the associated production of charm quarks and a Higgs boson decaying into a photon pair with the ATLAS detector


Aad G., Aakvaag E., Abbott B., Abdelhameed S., Abeling K., Abicht N., ...More

Journal of High Energy Physics, vol.2025, no.2, 2025 (SCI-Expanded) identifier identifier identifier

  • Publication Type: Article / Article
  • Volume: 2025 Issue: 2
  • Publication Date: 2025
  • Doi Number: 10.1007/jhep02(2025)045
  • Journal Name: Journal of High Energy Physics
  • Journal Indexes: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus, Academic Search Premier, INSPEC, zbMATH, Directory of Open Access Journals, Nature Index
  • Keywords: Hadron-Hadron Scattering, Higgs Physics
  • Istanbul University Affiliated: Yes

Abstract

A search for the production of a Higgs boson and one or more charm quarks, in which the Higgs boson decays into a photon pair, is presented. This search uses proton-proton collision data with a centre-of-mass energy of s = 13 TeV and an integrated luminosity of 140 fb−1 recorded by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The analysis relies on the identification of charm-quark-containing jets, and adopts an approach based on Gaussian process regression to model the non-resonant di-photon background. The observed (expected, assuming the Standard Model signal) upper limit at the 95% confidence level on the cross-section for producing a Higgs boson and at least one charm-quark-containing jet that passes a fiducial selection is found to be 10.6 pb (8.8 pb). The observed (expected) measured cross-section for this process is 5.3 ± 3.2 pb (2.9 ± 3.1 pb).