Search for the lepton flavor violating decay of a Higgs boson in the e±μ∓ final state in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV
Ka Wa Ho (Andy)
Graduate Student, University of Notre Dame
(Advised by Prof. Jessop)
A search for the lepton flavor violating decay of a Higgs boson with a mass from 110-160 GeV to an e±μ∓ pair is presented. The search is performed with a proton-proton collision data set at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb-1. No significant excess is observed for the Standard Model Higgs boson with a mass at around 125 GeV. The observed (expected) upper limit on the e±μ∓ branching fraction for it is determined to be 4.4 (4.7) x 10^-5 at 95% confidence level, the most stringent limit set thus far from direct searches. An excess of events over the expected background is observed at an e±μ∓ invariant mass of approximately 146 GeV with a global (local) significance of 2.8 (3.8) standard deviations.
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