Measurements of Higgs boson production in the decay channel with a pair of τ leptons in proton–proton collisions at √s = 13 TeV

Abstract

Measurements of Higgs boson production, where the Higgs boson decays into a pair of τ leptons, are presented, using a sample of proton-proton collisions collected with the CMS experiment at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, cor- responding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb−1 . Three analyses are presented. Two are targeting Higgs boson pro- duction via gluon fusion and vector boson fusion: a neural network based analysis and an analysis based on an event cat- egorization optimized on the ratio of signal over background events. These are complemented by an analysis targeting vec- tor boson associated Higgs boson production. Results are presented in the form of signal strengths relative to the stan- dard model predictions and products of cross sections and branching fraction to τ leptons, in up to 16 different kine- matic regions. For the simultaneous measurements of the neural network based analysis and the analysis targeting vec- tor boson associated Higgs boson production signal strengths are found to be 0.82 ± 0.11 for inclusive Higgs boson pro- duction, 0.67 ± 0.19 (0.81 ± 0.17) for the production mainly via gluon fusion (vector boson fusion), and 1.79 ± 0.45 for vector boson associated Higgs boson production.