Further Investigation on Model-Independent Probe of Heavy Neutral Higgs Bosons at the LHC Run 2

Abstract

In our previous paper, we provided general effective Higgs interactions for the lightest Higgs boson $h$ (SM-like) and a heavier neutral Higgs boson $H$ based on the effective Lagrangian formulation up to the dim-6 interactions, and then proposed two sensitive processes for probing $H$. We showed in several examples that the resonance peak of $H$ and its dim-6 effective coupling constants (ECC) can be detected at the LHC Run 2 with reasonable integrated luminosity. In this paper, we further perform a more thorough study of the most sensitive process, $pp\to VH^\ast\to VVV$, on the information about the relations between the $1\sigma,\,3\sigma,\,5\sigma$ statistical significance and the corresponding ranges of the Higgs ECC for an integrated luminosity of 100 fb$^{-1}$. These results have two useful applications in the LHC Run 2: (A) realizing the experimental determination of the ECC in the dim-6 interactions if $H$ is found and, (B) obtaining the theoretical exclusion bounds if $H$ is not found. Some alternative processes sensitive for certain ranges of the ECC are also analyzed.