The LHC excess of four-lepton events interpreted as Higgs-boson signal: background from Double Drell--Yan process?

Abstract

We construct a simple model of the Double Drell--Yan Process (DDYP) for proton--proton collisions and investigate its possible contribution to the background for the Higgs-boson searches at the LHC. We demonstrate that under the assumption of the predominance of short range, ${\cal O}(0.1)\,$fm, transverse-plane correlations of quark--antiquark pairs within the proton this contribution becomes important and may even explain the observed excess of the four-lepton events at the LHC -- the events interpreted as originating from the Higgs-boson decays: $ H \rightarrow ZZ^{*} \rightarrow 4l$ and $ H \rightarrow WW^{*} \rightarrow 2l 2 \nu$.