CMS logoCMS event Hgg
Compact Muon Solenoid
LHC, CERN

CMS-HIG-20-015 ; CERN-EP-2021-134
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 TeV
Phys. Rev. Lett. 128 (2022) 081805
Abstract: 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 data collected with the CMS detector at the LHC at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb$^{-1}$. These are the first differential measurements of the Higgs boson cross section in the final state of two $\tau$ leptons, and they constitute a significant improvement over measurements in other final states in events with a large jet multiplicity or with a Lorentz-boosted Higgs boson.
Figures & Tables Summary References CMS Publications
Figures

png pdf
Figure 1:
Observed and expected differential fiducial cross section in bins of $ {{p_{\mathrm {T}}} ^{\mathrm{H}}} $ (upper left), $ {N_\text {jets}} $ (upper right), and $ {{p_{\mathrm {T}}} ^{\mathrm {j}_1}} $ (lower). The most-left bin in the $ {{p_{\mathrm {T}}} ^{\mathrm {j}_1}} $ distribution includes all events without a jet with $ {p_{\mathrm {T}}} > $ 30 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.

png pdf
Figure 1-a:
Observed and expected differential fiducial cross section in bins of $ {{p_{\mathrm {T}}} ^{\mathrm{H}}} $. 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 bin includes the overflow.

png pdf
Figure 1-b:
Observed and expected differential fiducial cross section in bins of $ {N_\text {jets}} $. 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 bin includes the overflow.

png pdf
Figure 1-c:
Observed and expected differential fiducial cross section in bins of $ {{p_{\mathrm {T}}} ^{\mathrm {j}_1}} $. The most-left bin includes all events without a jet with $ {p_{\mathrm {T}}} > $ 30 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 bin includes the overflow.
Tables

png pdf
Table 1:
Event selection criteria. The ${p_{\mathrm {T}}}$ ranges are related to different triggers used during different data-taking periods. In events collected in 2016 in the $\mu {\tau _\mathrm {h}} $ channel, $ {\tau _\mathrm {h}} $ candidates with 0.2 $ < {| \eta |} < $ 0.3 are discarded because of a significantly larger misidentification rate of muons as $ {\tau _\mathrm {h}} $ objects.
Summary
In summary, measurements of the differential fiducial cross sections of the Higgs boson have been performed for the first time at the LHC in the decay channel of two $\tau$ leptons. The differential cross sections as functions of the Higgs boson transverse momentum, the jet multiplicity, and transverse momentum of the leading jet, are in agreement with the expectations of the standard model, with a competitive precision with respect to measurements in other final states in the phase spaces with a large jet multiplicity, or with a Higgs boson transverse momentum above 120 GeV. In addition, the fiducial inclusive cross section has been measured to be 426 $\pm$ 102 fb, in agreement with the standard-model expectation of 408 $\pm$ 27 fb.
References
1 M. Grazzini, A. Ilnicka, M. Spira, and M. Wiesemann Modeling BSM effects on the Higgs transverse-momentum spectrum in an EFT approach JHEP 03 (2017) 115 1612.00283
2 F. Bishara, U. Haisch, P. F. Monni, and E. Re Constraining light-quark Yukawa couplings from Higgs distributions PRL 118 (2017) 121801 1606.09253
3 S. Alioli et al. Higgsstrahlung at NNLL'$ + $NNLO matched to parton showers in GENEVA PRD 100 (2019) 096016 1909.02026
4 CMS Collaboration Measurement of the transverse momentum spectrum of the Higgs boson produced in pp collisions at $ \sqrt{s}= $ 8 TeV using $ \mathrm{H} \to \mathrm{W}\mathrm{W} $ decays JHEP 03 (2017) 032 CMS-HIG-15-010
1606.01522
5 ATLAS Collaboration Combined measurement of differential and total cross sections in the $ H \rightarrow \gamma \gamma $ and the $ H \rightarrow ZZ^* \rightarrow 4\ell $ decay channels at $ \sqrt{s} = $ 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector PLB 786 (2018) 114 1805.10197
6 CMS Collaboration Measurement and interpretation of differential cross sections for Higgs boson production at $ \sqrt{s} = $ 13 TeV PLB 792 (2019) 369 CMS-HIG-17-028
1812.06504
7 CMS Collaboration Measurement of inclusive and differential Higgs boson production cross sections in the diphoton decay channel in proton-proton collisions at $ \sqrt{s}= $ 13 TeV JHEP 01 (2019) 183 CMS-HIG-17-025
1807.03825
8 CMS Collaboration Measurement of the inclusive and differential Higgs boson production cross sections in the leptonic WW decay mode at $ \sqrt{s} = $ 13 TeV JHEP 03 (2021) 003 CMS-HIG-19-002
2007.01984
9 ATLAS Collaboration Measurements of the Higgs boson inclusive and differential fiducial cross sections in the 4$ \ell $ decay channel at $ \sqrt{s} = $ 13 TeV EPJC 80 (2020) 942 2004.03969
10 CMS Collaboration Measurements of production cross sections of the Higgs boson in the four-lepton final state in proton-proton collisions at $ \sqrt{s} = $ 13 TeV EPJC 81 (2021) 488 CMS-HIG-19-001
2103.04956
11 CMS Collaboration Observation of the Higgs boson decay to a pair of $ \tau $ leptons with the CMS detector PLB 779 (2018) 283 CMS-HIG-16-043
1708.00373
12 ATLAS Collaboration Cross-section measurements of the Higgs boson decaying into a pair of $ \tau $-leptons in proton-proton collisions at $ \sqrt{s}= $ 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector PRD 99 (2019) 072001 1811.08856
13 Particle Data Group, P. A. Zyla et al. Review of particle physics Prog. Theor. Exp. Phys. 2020 (2020) 083C01
14 CMS Collaboration The CMS experiment at the CERN LHC JINST 3 (2008) S08004 CMS-00-001
15 P. Nason A new method for combining NLO QCD with shower Monte Carlo algorithms JHEP 11 (2004) 040 hep-ph/0409146
16 S. Frixione, P. Nason, and C. Oleari Matching NLO QCD computations with parton shower simulations: the POWHEG method JHEP 11 (2007) 070 0709.2092
17 S. Alioli, P. Nason, C. Oleari, and E. Re A general framework for implementing NLO calculations in shower Monte Carlo programs: the POWHEG BOX JHEP 06 (2010) 043 1002.2581
18 S. Alioli et al. Jet pair production in POWHEG JHEP 04 (2011) 081 1012.3380
19 S. Alioli, P. Nason, C. Oleari, and E. Re NLO higgs boson production via gluon fusion matched with shower in POWHEG JHEP 04 (2009) 002 0812.0578
20 K. Hamilton, P. Nason, E. Re, and G. Zanderighi NNLOPS simulation of Higgs boson production JHEP 10 (2013) 222 1309.0017
21 K. Hamilton, P. Nason, and G. Zanderighi Finite quark-mass effects in the NNLOPS POWHEG+MiNLO Higgs generator JHEP 05 (2015) 140 1501.04637
22 CMS Collaboration A measurement of the Higgs boson mass in the diphoton decay channel PLB 805 (2020) 135425 CMS-HIG-19-004
2002.06398
23 J. Alwall et al. The automated computation of tree-level and next-to-leading order differential cross sections, and their matching to parton shower simulations JHEP 07 (2014) 079 1405.0301
24 J. Alwall et al. Comparative study of various algorithms for the merging of parton showers and matrix elements in hadronic collisions EPJC 53 (2008) 473 0706.2569
25 J. M. Campbell, R. K. Ellis, and C. Williams Vector boson pair production at the LHC JHEP 07 (2011) 018 1105.0020
26 T. Gehrmann et al. $ W^+W^- $ production at hadron colliders in next to next to leading order QCD PRL 113 (2014) 212001 1408.5243
27 K. Melnikov and F. Petriello Electroweak gauge boson production at hadron colliders through $ O(\alpha_s^2) $ PRD 74 (2006) 114017 hep-ph/0609070
28 M. Czakon and A. Mitov Top++: A program for the calculation of the top-pair cross-section at hadron colliders CPC 185 (2014) 2930 1112.5675
29 T. Sjostrand et al. An introduction to PYTHIA 8.2 CPC 191 (2015) 159 1410.3012
30 CMS Collaboration Investigations of the impact of the parton shower tuning in Pythia 8 in the modelling of $ \mathrm{t\overline{t}} $ at $ \sqrt{s}= $ 8 and 13 TeV CMS-PAS-TOP-16-021 CMS-PAS-TOP-16-021
31 CMS Collaboration Extraction and validation of a new set of CMS PYTHIA8 tunes from underlying-event measurements EPJC 80 (2020) 4 CMS-GEN-17-001
1903.12179
32 R. D. Ball et al. Unbiased global determination of parton distributions and their uncertainties at NNLO and at LO NPB 855 (2012) 153 1107.2652
33 NNPDF Collaboration Parton distributions with QED corrections NPB 877 (2013) 290 1308.0598
34 NNPDF Collaboration Parton distributions from high-precision collider data EPJC 77 (2017) 663 1706.00428
35 GEANT4 Collaboration GEANT4 --- a simulation toolkit NIMA 506 (2003) 250
36 CMS Collaboration Particle-flow reconstruction and global event description with the CMS detector JINST 12 (2017) P10003 CMS-PRF-14-001
1706.04965
37 CMS Collaboration Performance of the CMS muon detector and muon reconstruction with proton-proton collisions at $ \sqrt{s}= $ 13 TeV JINST 13 (2018) P06015 CMS-MUO-16-001
1804.04528
38 CMS Collaboration Performance of the reconstruction and identification of high-momentum muons in proton-proton collisions at $ \sqrt{s} = $ 13 TeV JINST 15 (2020) P02027 CMS-MUO-17-001
1912.03516
39 CMS Collaboration Electron and photon reconstruction and identification with the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC JINST 16 (2021) P05014 CMS-EGM-17-001
2012.06888
40 M. Cacciari, G. P. Salam, and G. Soyez The anti-$ {k_{\mathrm{T}}} $ jet clustering algorithm JHEP 04 (2008) 063 0802.1189
41 CMS Collaboration Jet algorithms performance in 13 TeV data CMS-PAS-JME-16-003 CMS-PAS-JME-16-003
42 CMS Collaboration Jet energy scale and resolution in the CMS experiment in pp collisions at 8 TeV JINST 12 (2017) P02014 CMS-JME-13-004
1607.03663
43 CMS Collaboration Jet energy scale and resolution performance with 13 TeV data collected by CMS in 2016-2018 CDS
44 CMS Collaboration Identification of heavy-flavour jets with the CMS detector in pp collisions at 13 TeV JINST 13 (2018) P05011 CMS-BTV-16-002
1712.07158
45 CMS Collaboration Performance of reconstruction and identification of $ \tau $ leptons decaying to hadrons and $ \nu_\tau $ in pp collisions at $ \sqrt{s}= $ 13 TeV JINST 13 (2018) P10005 CMS-TAU-16-003
1809.02816
46 CMS Collaboration Performance of the DeepTau algorithm for the discrimination of taus against jets, electron, and muons CDS
47 CMS Collaboration Performance of missing transverse momentum reconstruction in proton-proton collisions at $ \sqrt{s} = $ 13 TeV using the CMS detector JINST 14 (2019) P07004 CMS-JME-17-001
1903.06078
48 LHC Higgs Cross Section Working Group Handbook of LHC Higgs cross sections: 4. Deciphering the nature of the Higgs sector CERN-2017-002-M 1610.07922
49 A. Denner et al. Standard model Higgs-boson branching ratios with uncertainties EPJC 71 (2011) 1753 1107.5909
50 NNPDF Collaboration Impact of heavy quark masses on parton distributions and LHC phenomenology NPB 849 (2011) 296 1101.1300
51 CMS Collaboration An embedding technique to determine $ \tau\tau $ backgrounds in proton-proton collision data JINST 14 (2019) P06032 CMS-TAU-18-001
1903.01216
52 CMS Collaboration Measurement of the $ \mathrm{Z}\gamma^{*} \to \tau\tau $ cross section in pp collisions at $ \sqrt{s} = $ 13 TeV and validation of $ \tau $ lepton analysis techniques EPJC 78 (2018) 708 CMS-HIG-15-007
1801.03535
53 CMS Collaboration Precision luminosity measurement in proton-proton collisions at $ \sqrt{s} = $ 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016 at CMS Submitted to EPJC CMS-LUM-17-003
2104.01927
54 CMS Collaboration CMS luminosity measurement for the 2017 data-taking period at $ \sqrt{s} = $ 13 TeV CMS-PAS-LUM-17-004 CMS-PAS-LUM-17-004
55 CMS Collaboration CMS luminosity measurement for the 2018 data-taking period at $ \sqrt{s} = $ 13 TeV CMS-PAS-LUM-18-002 CMS-PAS-LUM-18-002
56 L. Bianchini, J. Conway, E. K. Friis, and C. Veelken Reconstruction of the higgs mass in $ H \to \tau\tau $ events by dynamical likelihood techniques J. Phys. Conf. Ser. 513 (2014) 022035
57 C. Bierlich et al. Robust independent validation of experiment and theory: Rivet version 3 SciPost Phys. 8 (2020) 026 1912.05451
58 A. N. Tikhonov Solution of incorrectly formulated problems and the regularization method Sov. Math. Dokl. 4 (1963) 1035
59 A. Hocker and V. Kartvelishvili SVD approach to data unfolding NIMA 372 (1996) 469 hep-ph/9509307
60 S. Schmitt TUnfold: an algorithm for correcting migration effects in high energy physics JINST 7 (2012) T10003 1205.6201
61 CMS Collaboration HEPData record for this analysis HEPData record for this analysis
Compact Muon Solenoid
LHC, CERN