Search for a heavy Higgs boson decaying into two lighter Higgs bosons in the ττbb final state at 13TeV

A search for a heavy Higgs boson H decaying into the observed Higgs boson h with a mass of 125 GeV and another Higgs boson h(S) is presented. The h and h(S) bosons are required to decay into a pair of tau leptons and a pair of b quarks, respectively. The search uses a sample of proton-proton collisions collected with the CMS detector at a center-of-mass energy of 13TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 137 fb(-1). Mass ranges of 240-3000 GeV for m(H) and 60-2800 GeV for m(hS) are explored in the search. No signal has been observed. Model independent 95% confidence level upper limits on the product of the production cross section and the branching fractions of the signal process are set with a sensitivity ranging from 125 fb (for m(H) = 240 GeV) to 2.7 fb (for m(H) = 1000 GeV). These limits are compared to maximally allowed products of the production cross section and the branching fractions of the signal process in the next-to-minimal supersymmetric extension of the standard model.

Automated summary

The search for a heavy Higgs boson H decaying into the observed Higgs boson h and another Higgs boson h(S) did not yield any signal. Upper limits on the product of the production cross section and the branching fractions of the signal process were set for different mass ranges of H and h(S), with sensitivity ranging from 125 fb to 2.7 fb. These limits were compared to the maximum allowed products in the next-to-minimal supersymmetric extension of the standard model.