Measurement of the Inclusive and Differential Higgs Boson Production Cross Sections in the Decay Mode to a Pair of $\tau$ Leptons in $pp$ Collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13\mathrm{TeV}$

Measurements of the inclusive and differential fiducial cross sections of the Higgs boson are presented, using the $\tau$ lepton decay channel. The differential cross sections are measured as functions of the Higgs boson transverse momentum, jet multiplicity, and transverse momentum of the leading jet in the event, if any. The analysis is performed using proton-proton collision data collected with the CMS detector at the LHC at a center-of-mass energy of $13\mathrm{TeV}$ and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of $138{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$. These are the first differential measurements of the Higgs boson cross section in the final state of two $\tau$ leptons. In final states with a large jet multiplicity or with a Lorentz-boosted Higgs boson, these measurements constitute a significant improvement over measurements performed in other final states.

Figure 1

Observed and expected differential fiducial cross section in bins of $p_T^H$ (upper), $N_{\text{jets}}$ (middle), and $p_T^{j_1}$ (lower). Both regularized (full markers) and unregularized (hollow markers) are shown. The most-left bin in the $p_T^{j_1}$ distribution includes all events without a jet with $p_T>30\mathrm{GeV}$. The uncertainty bands in the theoretical predictions include uncertainties from the following sources: PDF, renormalization and factorization scale, underlying event and parton showering, and branching fraction of the Higgs boson to $\tau$ leptons. The last bins include the overflow.