Search for a heavy Higgs boson decaying into a Z boson and another heavy Higgs boson in the llbb final state in pp collisions at root s=13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Abstract

A search for a heavy neutral Higgs boson, A, decaying into a Z boson and another heavy Higgs boson, H, is performed using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 36.1 fb(-1) from proton-proton collisions at root s = 13 TeV recorded in 2015 and 2016 by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The search considers the Z boson decaying to electrons or muons and the H boson into a pair of b-quarks. No evidence for the production of an A boson is found. Considering each production process separately, the 95% confidence-level upper limits on the pp -> A -> ZH production cross-section times the branching ratio H -> bb are in the range of 14-830 fb for the gluon-gluon fusion process and 26-570 fb for the b-associated process for the mass ranges 130-700 GeV of the H boson and 230-800 GeV of the A boson. The results are interpreted in the context of two-Higgs-doublet models. (C) 2018 Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by SCOAP(3).