Searching for “invisible” Higgs decays
New ATLAS results with contributions from our group
29.10.2020
At the Higgs 2020 Conference, new results of the ATLAS Collaboration on the search for exotic Higgs decays were presented. Included was also a new combined result for Higgs decay products that leave no trace in the detector, with major contributions from our group. This is especially interesting for “Higgs portal” models, in which the Higgs boson could decay into Dark Matter particles. The new combination sets an upper limit of 11% on the Higgs-to-invisible branching fraction. More information can be found in the accompanying physics briefing released by the ATLAS Collaboration.
The plot above shows the expected and observed limits on the invisible-decay branching fraction for the production channels of a Higgs boson in association with a top-antitop quark pair (ttH) and through vector boson fusion (VBF) as well as the combined result from Run 2, from Run 1, and the combined Run 1+2 result, respectively.