Probing the Higgs boson via vector boson fusion with single jet tagging at the LHC

The signature produced by the Standard Model Higgs boson in the vector boson fusion (VBF) mechanism is usually pinpointed by requiring two well separated hadronic jets, one of which (at least) tends to be in the forward direction. With the increase of instantaneous luminosity at the LHC, the isolation of the Higgs boson produced with the VBF mechanism is rendered more challenging. In this paper the feasibility of single jet tagging is explored in a high-luminosity scenario. It is demonstrated that the separation in rapidity between the tagging jet and the Higgs boson can be effectively used to isolate the VBF signal. This variable is robust from the experimental and QCD standpoints. Single jet tagging allows us to probe the spin-CP quantum numbers of the Higgs boson.

Figure 1

Distributions of the rapidity separation between the Higgs boson and the tagging jet. The VBF and $\mathrm{ggF}+1j$ processes are described with POWHEG and MINLO, respectively. The $\mathrm{ggF}+1j$ production mechanism is described with the HJ and HJJ versions of MINLO (see text). Variations in the differential cross sections due to scale variations are shown in the form of bands around the central values.

Figure 2

Effective cross-section (in pb) of $\mathrm{ggF}+\text{jets}$ and VBF production as a function of the thresholds on the subheading jet $p_{T,\hspace{0.17em}}{p}_{Tj2}$ (in GeV) and $\mathrm{\Delta }{y}_{Hj}$.

Figure 3

Distribution of the rapidity separation between the Higgs boson and the leading jet in VBF. Results are shown at parton level for the SM case ($\lambda =0$) and nonzero BSM contributions (see text).