Measurements of $WH$ and $ZH$ production with Higgs boson decays into bottom quarks and direct constraints on the charm Yukawa coupling in $13\,\mathrm{TeV}$ $pp$ collisions with the ATLAS detector

Abstract

A study of the Higgs boson decaying into bottom quarks ($H \to b\bar{b}$) and charm quarks ($H \to c\bar{c}$) is performed, in the associated production channel of the Higgs boson with a $W$ or $Z$ boson, using $140\,\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$ of proton-proton collision data at $\sqrt{s} = 13\,\mathrm{TeV}$ collected by the ATLAS detector. The individual production of $WH$ and $ZH$ with $H \to b\bar{b}$ is established with observed (expected) significances of $5.3$ ($5.5$) and $4.9$ ($5.6$) standard deviations, respectively. Differential cross-section measurements of the gauge boson transverse momentum within the simplified template cross-section framework are performed in a total of 13 kinematical fiducial regions. The search for the $H \to c\bar{c}$ decay yields an observed (expected) upper limit at 95\% confidence level of $11.5$ ($10.6$) times the Standard Model prediction. The results are also used to set constraints on the charm coupling modifier, resulting in $|\kappa_c| < 4.2$ at 95\% confidence level. Combining the $H \to b\bar{b}$ and $H \to c\bar{c}$ measurements constrains the absolute value of the ratio of Higgs-charm and Higgs-bottom coupling modifiers ($|\kappa_c/\kappa_b|$) to be less than $3.6$ at 95$\% $ confidence level.