@article{6b194dc139e84d9985ef3527c69b6118,
title = "Search for an exotic decay of the Higgs boson into a Z boson and a pseudoscalar particle in proton-proton collisions at s=13TeV",
abstract = "A search for an exotic decay of the Higgs boson to a Z boson and a light pseudoscalar particle (a), decaying to a pair of leptons and a pair of photons, respectively, is presented. The search is based on proton-proton collision data at a center-of-mass energy of s=13TeV, collected with the CMS detector at the LHC and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138fb −1. The analysis probes pseudoscalar masses m a between 1 and 30 GeV, leading to two pairs of well-isolated leptons and photons. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set on the Higgs boson production cross section times its branching fraction to two leptons and two photons. The observed (expected) limits are in the range of 1.1–17.8 (1.7–17.9) fb within the probed m a interval. An excess of data above the expected standard model background with a local (global) significance of 2.6 (1.3) standard deviations is observed for a mass hypothesis of m a=3GeV. Limits on models involving axion-like particles, formulated as an effective field theory, are also reported. ",
keywords = "hep-ex",
author = "{CMS Collaboration} and Bols, {Emil S{\o}rensen} and Jorgen D'Hondt and Soumya Dansana and {De Moor}, Alexandre and Martin Delcourt and {El Faham}, Hesham and Steven Lowette and Inna Makarenko and Denise M{\"u}ller and Sahasransu, {Abanti Ranadhir} and Stefaan Tavernier and Michael Tytgat and {Van Putte}, Senne and David Vannerom and Nicolas Stylianou",
note = "Funding Information: Individuals have received support from the Marie-Curie program and the European Research Council and Horizon 2020 Grant, contract Nos. 675440, 724704, 752730, 758316, 765710, 824093, and COST Action CA16108 (European Union); the Leventis Foundation; the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation; the Science Committee, project no. 22rl-037 (Armenia); the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office; the Fonds pour la Formation \u00E0 la Recherche dans l'Industrie et dans l'Agriculture (FRIA-Belgium); the Agentschap voor Innovatie door Wetenschap en Technologie (IWT-Belgium); the F.R.S.-FNRS and FWO (Belgium) under the \u201CExcellence of Science \u2013 EOS\u201D \u2013 be.h project n. 30820817; the Beijing Municipal Science & Technology Commission, No. Z191100007219010 and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (China); the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MEYS) of the Czech Republic; the Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation, grant FR-22-985 (Georgia); the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), under Germany's Excellence Strategy \u2013 EXC 2121 \u201CQuantum Universe\u201D \u2013 390833306, and under project number 400140256 - GRK2497; the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (HFRI), Project Number 2288 (Greece); the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the New National Excellence Program - \u00DANKP, the NKFIH research grants K 124845, K 124850, K 128713, K 128786, K 129058, K 131991, K 133046, K 138136, K 143460, K 143477, 2020-2.2.1-ED-2021-00181, and TKP2021-NKTA-64 (Hungary); the Council of Science and Industrial Research, India; ICSC \u2013 National Research Center for High Performance Computing, Big Data and Quantum Computing, funded by the EU NexGeneration program (Italy); the Latvian Council of Science; the Ministry of Education and Science, project no. 2022/WK/14, and the National Science Center, contracts Opus 2021/41/B/ST2/01369 and 2021/43/B/ST2/01552 (Poland); the Funda\u00E7\u00E3o para a Ci\u00EAncia e a Tecnologia, grant CEECIND/01334/2018 (Portugal); the National Priorities Research Program by Qatar National Research Fund; MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033, ERDF \u201Ca way of making Europe\u201D, and the Programa Estatal de Fomento de la Investigaci\u00F3n Cient\u00EDfica y T\u00E9cnica de Excelencia Mar\u00EDa de Maeztu, grant MDM-2017-0765 and Programa Severo Ochoa del Principado de Asturias (Spain); the Chulalongkorn Academic into Its 2nd Century Project Advancement Project, and the National Science, Research and Innovation Fund via the Program Management Unit for Human Resources & Institutional Development, Research and Innovation, grant B05F650021 (Thailand); the Kavli Foundation; the Nvidia Corporation; the SuperMicro Corporation; the Welch Foundation, contract C-1845; and the Weston Havens Foundation (USA). Funding Information: We congratulate our colleagues in the CERN accelerator departments for the excellent performance of the LHC and thank the technical and administrative staffs at CERN and at other CMS institutes for their contributions to the success of the CMS effort. In addition, we gratefully acknowledge the computing centers and personnel of the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid and other centers for delivering so effectively the computing infrastructure essential to our analyses. Finally, we acknowledge the enduring support for the construction and operation of the LHC, the CMS detector, and the supporting computing infrastructure provided by the following funding agencies: SC (Armenia), BMBWF and FWF (Austria); FNRS and FWO (Belgium); CNPq, CAPES, FAPERJ, FAPERGS, and FAPESP (Brazil); MES and BNSF (Bulgaria); CERN; CAS, MoST, and NSFC (China); MINCIENCIAS (Colombia); MSES and CSF (Croatia); RIF (Cyprus); SENESCYT (Ecuador); MoER, ERC PUT and ERDF (Estonia); Academy of Finland, MEC, and HIP (Finland); CEA and CNRS/IN2P3 (France); SRNSF (Georgia); BMBF, DFG, and HGF (Germany); GSRI (Greece); NKFIH (Hungary); DAE and DST (India); IPM (Iran); SFI (Ireland); INFN (Italy); MSIP and NRF (Republic of Korea); MES (Latvia); LAS (Lithuania); MOE and UM (Malaysia); BUAP, CINVESTAV, CONACYT, LNS, SEP, and UASLP-FAI (Mexico); MOS (Montenegro); MBIE (New Zealand); PAEC (Pakistan); MES and NSC (Poland); FCT (Portugal); MESTD (Serbia); MCIN/AEI and PCTI (Spain); MOSTR (Sri Lanka); Swiss Funding Agencies (Switzerland); MST (Taipei); MHESI and NSTDA (Thailand); TUBITAK and TENMAK (Turkey); NASU (Ukraine); STFC (United Kingdom); DOE and NSF (USA). Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2024 The Author",
year = "2024",
month = may,
day = "1",
doi = "10.1016/j.physletb.2024.138582",
language = "English",
volume = "852",
journal = "Phys. Lett. B",
issn = "0370-2693",
publisher = "Elsevier",
number = "2024",
}