Search for the \(H \rightarrow W^{+} W^{-}\) Process at the LHeC Experiment

Abstract

We consider the decay of the Higgs boson to W + W − at a proposed Large Hadron Electron Collider and determine the likelihood of detecting a signal for the Higgs mass from its decay product W jets by imposing cuts to select candidate jet pairs and optimizing the value of the angular separation ∆R. It was found that at the LHeC experiment (CM energy √ s = 1.3 TeV and luminosity of 100 fb −1 per year), the highest efficiency is obtained with ∆R = 0.4, along with a selection scheme of 10 < m < 85 GeV, |∆η| < 1, p T of jets 1 and 2 between 10-20 GeV and p T of jets 3 and 4 > 10 GeV: this led to an efficiency between 7.1-7.5% for finding the invariant 4-jet mass in a mass region < 140 GeV. Under signal-to-background comparison, the signal showed a 3.8σ excess compared to the charged current W-jet background.

The Large Hadron–Electron Collider at the HL-LHC

“…It readily contributed fundamental insights, for example, to the development of QCD, by confirming fractional quark charges and asymptotic freedom, and by the spectacular finding that the weak isospin charge of the right-handed electron was zero [24] which established the Glashow-Weinberg-Salam 'Model of Leptons' [25] as the basis of the united electroweak theory. The quest to reach higher energies in accelerator-based particle physics led to generations of colliders, of which HERA [26] is, so far, the only electron-proton example.…”