Higgs Signatures in Decay and Production

• Higgs Decay

• Higgs Production at the LHC

• The decay modes of the Higgs are divided into two categories: tree-level decays and loop-induced decays.

• Nature’s choice for the Higgs mass disallows the decay into on-shell gauge bosons, i.e., $h\to WW$ and $h\to ZZ$. This leads to a dominant decay mode, into $b\bar{b}$, the heaviest accessible quark-antiquark pair.

• The decay $h\to gg$ is loop-induced and mediated by quark loops only. The decay width is dominated by the top quark loop. The other loop-induced decays have smaller decay rates due to (partial) interference between the quark loop and the gauge loop contributions.

• The current status of the Higgs decay measurements is in excellent agreement with the SM predictions.

• The production cross section for inclusive Higgs production is dominated by $gg\to h$, despite it being a loop-suppressed process. This is due to the large contributions from the gluon PDFs. The next most important production mechanisms are $q\bar{q}\to Vh$ and $q\bar{q}\to q\bar{q}h$ .

• While we have the ability to probe the Higgs boson’s properties, such as mass and couplings, through measurements of both decay rates and production cross sections, the interference between the two can make it difficult to disentangle the two. We typically require a simultaneous analysis of both.