Search for Invisible Decays of a Higgs Boson Produced in Association with a Z Boson in ATLAS

Aad, G. and Abajyan, T. and Abbott, B. and Abdallah, J. and Abdel, Khalek S. and Abdinov, O. and Aben, R. and Abi, B. and Abolins, M. and Abouzeid, O. S. and Abramowicz, H. and Abreu, H. and Abulaiti, Y. and Acharya, B. S. and Adamczyk, L. and Adams, D. L. and Addy, T. N. and Adelman, J. and Adomeit, S. and Adye, T. and Aefsky, S. and Agatonovic-Jovin, T. and Aguilar-Saavedra, J. A. and Agustoni, M. and Ahlen, S. P. and Ahmad, A. and Ahmadov, F. and Aielli, G. and Åkesson, T. P. A. and Akimoto, G. and Krasznahorkay, Attila and Nagai, Yoshikazu and Pásztor, Gabriella and Tóth, József (2014) Search for Invisible Decays of a Higgs Boson Produced in Association with a Z Boson in ATLAS. PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS, 112 (20). ISSN 0031-9007

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Abstract

A search for evidence of invisible-particle decay modes of a Higgs boson produced in association with a Z boson at the Large Hadron Collider is presented. No deviation from the Standard Model expectation is observed in 4.5 fb−1 (20.3 fb−1) of 7 (8) TeV pp collision data collected by the ATLAS experiment. Assuming the Standard Model rate for ZH production, an upper limit of 75%, at the 95% confidence level is set on the branching ratio to invisible-particle decay modes of the Higgs boson at a mass of 125.5 GeV. The limit on the branching ratio is also interpreted in terms of an upper limit on the allowed dark matter–nucleon scattering cross section within a Higgs-portal dark matter scenario. Within the constraints of such a scenario, the results presented in this Letter provide the strongest available limits for low-mass dark matter candidates. Limits are also set on an additional neutral Higgs boson, in the mass range 110 < mH < 400 GeV, produced in association with a Z boson and decaying to invisible particles.

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