Evidence for Higgs boson decays to a low-mass dilepton system and a photon in pp collisions at root s=13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Abstract

A search for the Higgs boson decaying into a photon and a pair of electrons or muons with an invariant mass mℓℓ<30 GeV is presented. The analysis is performed using 139 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data, produced by the LHC at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV and collected by the ATLAS experiment. Evidence for the H→ℓℓγ process is found with a significance of 3.2 over the background-only hypothesis, compared to an expected significance of 2.1 for the Standard Model prediction. The best-fit value of the signal-strength parameter, defined as the ratio of the observed signal yield to the one expected in the Standard Model, is μ=1.5±0.5. The Higgs boson production cross-section times the H→ℓℓγ branching ratio for mℓℓ<30 GeV is determined to be 8.7−2.7+2.8 fb. ; We acknowledge the support of ANPCyT, Argentina; YerPhI, Armenia; ARC, Australia; BMWFW and FWF, Austria; ANAS, Azerbaijan; SSTC, Belarus; CNPq and FAPESP, Brazil; NSERC, NRC and CFI, Canada; CERN; ANID, Chile; CAS, MOST and NSFC, China; COLCIENCIAS, Colombia; MSMT CR, MPO CR and VSC CR, Czech Republic; DNRF and DNSRC, Denmark; IN2P3-CNRS and CEADRF/IRFU, France; SRNSFG, Georgia; BMBF, HGF and MPG, Germany; GSRT, Greece; RGC and Hong Kong SAR, China; ISF and Benoziyo Center, Israel; INFN, Italy; MEXT and JSPS, Japan; CNRST, Morocco; NWO, Netherlands; RCN, Norway; MNiSW and NCN, Poland; FCT, Portugal; MNE/IFA, Romania; JINR; MES of Russia and NRC KI, Russian Federation; MESTD, Serbia; MSSR, Slovakia; ARRS and MIZS, Slovenia; DST/NRF, South Africa; MICINN, Spain; SRC and Wallenberg Foundation, Sweden; SERI, SNSF and Cantons of Bern and Geneva, Switzerland; MOST, Taiwan; TAEK, Turkey; STFC, United Kingdom; DOE and NSF, United States of America. In addition, individual groups and members have received support from BCKDF, CANARIE, Compute Canada, CRC and IVADO, Canada; Beijing Municipal Sci-ence & Technology Commission, China; COST, ERC, ERDF, Horizon 2020 and Marie SkodowskaCurie Actions, European Union; In-vestissements d'Avenir Labex, ...