Evidence for the 125 GeV Higgs boson decaying to a pair of т leptons

Authors

S. Chatrchyan, Yerevan Physics Institute
Ekaterina Avdeeva, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Kenneth A. Bloom, University of Nebraska - LincolnFollow
Daniel R. Claes, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Aaron Dominguez, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Rebeca Gonzalez Suarez, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
J. Keller, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
D. Knowlton, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Ilya Kravchenko, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
J. Lazo-Flores, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
S. Malik, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
F. Meier, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Gregory Snow, University of Nebraska - LincolnFollow
The CMS collaboration, The CMS collaboration

Date of this Version

5-22-2014

Citation

JHEP05(2014)104; doi:10.1007/JHEP05(2014)104

Comments

Copyright © 2014 CERN, issued under cc license; published by Springer.

Abstract

A search for a standard model Higgs boson decaying into a pair of т leptons is performed using events recorded by the CMS experiment at the LHC in 2011 and 2012. The dataset corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 4.9 fb⁻¹ at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and 19.7 fb⁻¹ at 8TeV. Each т lepton decays hadronically or leptonically to an electron or a muon, leading to six different final states for the т -lepton pair, all considered in this analysis. An excess of events is observed over the expected background contributions, with a local significance larger than 3 standard deviations for mH values between 115 and 130 GeV. The best fit of the observed H → т т signal cross section times branching fraction for m_H = 125GeV is 0.78±0.27 times the standard model expectation. These observations constitute evidence for the 125 GeV Higgs boson decaying to a pair of т leptons.