Higgs Measurements at a Muon Collider

Abstract

In light of the recent discovery of an approximately 126 GeV Higgs boson at the LHC, the particle physics community is beginning to explore the possibilities for a next-generation Higgs factory particle accelerator. In this report we study the s-channel resonant Higgs boson production and Standard Model backgrounds at a proposed \mu+\mu- collider Higgs factory operating at center-of-mass energy sqrt(s) = M_H with a beam width of 4.2 MeV. We study PYTHIA-generated Standard Model Higgs and background events at the generator level to identify and evaluate important channels for discovery and measurement of the Higgs mass, width, and branching ratios. We find that the H^0 -> bb and H^0 -> WW^* channels are the most useful for locating the Higgs peak. With an integrated luminosity of 1 fb^-1 we can measure a 126 GeV Standard Model Higgs mass accurately to within 0.25 MeV and its total width to within 0.45 MeV. Our results demonstrate the value of the high Higgs cross section and narrow beam resolution potentially achievable at a muon collider.