Probing Anomalous Couplings of the Higgs Boson to Weak Bosons and Fermions with Precision Calculations
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Date
2019-02-21
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Johns Hopkins University
Abstract
In this thesis I present a phenomenological study of the Higgs boson anomalous couplings to weak bosons and fermions. I focus on Higgs bosons produced in association with a weak boson ($V \to VH~(V=W^\pm,Z)$) at hadron and lepton colliders, and direct production via proton-proton scattering followed by weak boson decay ($pp \to H \to VV$). The $V \to VH$ interactions as well as the interaction between the Higgs boson and fermions ($Hff$) are investigated along with the construction of event generators for the $e^- e^+ \to ZH$ and $q \bar q \to VH$ processes. Within the framework of \textsc{JHUGen}, I discuss numerical simulation code that calculates the amplitude for the $q \bar q \to VH$ process, including the anomalous $HVV$ and $Hff$ couplings, to next-to-leading order precision in Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). The $gg \to ZH$ process is also included due to its sizable contribution. The construction of event generators at leading and next-to-leading order are presented in detail. The $pp \to H \to VV$ processes are calculated using modified event generators of \textsc{MadGraph} and \textsc{MCFM} with up to next-to-next-to-leading order QCD and NLO Quantum Electrodynamics effects taken into account. I also develop a method for constraining the anomalous Higgs boson (Yukawa) coupling to quarks in the first two generations, and I study the method using early data from the Large Hadron Collider.
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Keywords
high energy physics, Higgs boson, QCD, electroweak, event generator, Monte Carlo, numerical simulation, particle physics, phenomenology, anomalous coupling