Observation of Higgs Boson Decay to Bottom Quarks
Abstract
The observation of the standard model (SM) Higgs boson decay to a pair of bottom quarks is presented. The main contribution to this result is from processes in which Higgs bosons are produced in association with a W or Z boson (V H ), and are searched for in final states including 0, 1, or 2 charged leptons and two identified bottom quark jets. The results from the measurement of these processes in a data sample recorded by the CMS experiment in 2017, comprising 41.3 fb-1 of proton-proton collisions at √{s }=13 TeV , are described. When combined with previous V H measurements using data collected at √{s }=7 , 8, and 13 TeV, an excess of events is observed at mH=125 GeV with a significance of 4.8 standard deviations, where the expectation for the SM Higgs boson is 4.9. The corresponding measured signal strength is 1.01 ±0.22 . The combination of this result with searches by the CMS experiment for H →b b ¯ in other production processes yields an observed (expected) significance of 5.6 (5.5) standard deviations and a signal strength of 1.04 ±0.20 .
- Publication:
-
Physical Review Letters
- Pub Date:
- September 2018
- DOI:
- 10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.121801
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1808.08242
- Bibcode:
- 2018PhRvL.121l1801S
- Keywords:
-
- High Energy Physics - Experiment
- E-Print:
- Replaced with the published version. Added the journal reference and the DOI. All the figures and tables, including additional supplementary figures and tables, can be found at http://cms-results.web.cern.ch/cms-results/public-results/publications/HIG-18-016 (CMS Public Pages)