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

A search for a standard model Higgs boson decaying into a pair of τ 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[superscript −1] at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and 19.7 fb[superscript...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Apyan, Aram, Busza, Wit, Cali, Ivan Amos, Chan, M., Di Matteo, Leonardo, Gomez-Ceballos, Guillelmo, Goncharov, Maxim, Gulhan, Doga Can, Klute, Markus, Lai, Yue Shi, Ma, Teng, Paus, Christoph M. E., Ralph, Duncan Kelley, Stephans, George S. F., Velicanu, Dragos Alexandru, Veverka, Jan, Wyslouch, Boleslaw, Yoon, A. S., Zanetti, Marco, Barbieri, Richard Alexander, Bauer, Gerry P, Dutta, Valentina, Lee, Yen-Jie, Levin, Andrew Michael, Luckey Jr, P David, Roland, Christof E, Roland, Gunther M, Stoeckli, Fabian, Sumorok, Konstanty C, Yang, Mingming, Wyslouch, Victoria
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Springer-Verlag 2014
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/89452
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3831-9071
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3106-4894
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6332-5839
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8983-2169
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1260-777X
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6047-4211
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7945-005X
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3681-0649
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9418-6656
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1486-606X
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2593-7767
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9236-6621
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0869-5631
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1136-6900
Description
Summary:A search for a standard model Higgs boson decaying into a pair of τ 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[superscript −1] at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and 19.7 fb[superscript −1] at 8 TeV. Each τ lepton decays hadronically or leptonically to an electron or a muon, leading to six different final states for the τ -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 m [subscript H] values between 115 and 130 GeV. The best fit of the observed H → τ τ signal cross section times branching fraction for m [subscript H] = 125 GeV 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 τ leptons.