A search for exotic decay of the Higgs boson to a pair of light bosons with 2 b-jets and 2 photons in the final state

by Mr Anirban Bala (DHEP, TIFR)

Tuesday 12 Aug 2025, 11:00 → 12:30 Asia/Kolkata

A 269 (TIFR, Mumbai)

In this talk I will present the exotic decay of the Standard Model (SM) Higgs boson (H) to a pair of light pseudoscalar bosons (A) of mass less than the half of the mass of the SM like Higgs boson, where one of them decays to a pair of b quarks and the other to a pair of photons. Such signatures are predicted in Beyond Standard Model (BSM) physics e.g. Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM). The analysis is based on the full Run 2 data recorded with the CMS detector at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 137 fb-1. The search is performed in the VH (V=W/Z boson) production channel of the Higgs boson. The analysis is sensitive to the mass range of ‘A’ 20-60 GeV. The expected limits at 95% CL are placed on the SM Higgs production cross section times branching ratio in this particular decay channel.