Boosted Higgses from chromomagnetic $b$'s: $b\bar{b}h$ at high luminosity

Abstract

This paper examines detection prospects and constraints on the chromomagnetic dipole operator for the bottom quark. This operator has a flavor, chirality and Lorentz structure that is distinct from other dimension six operators considered in Higgs coupling studies. Its non-standard Lorentz structure bolsters boosted $b \bar{b} h$ events, providing a rate independent signal of new physics. To date, we find this operator is unconstrained by $p p \rightarrow h + {\rm jets}$ and $pp \rightarrow \bar b b $ searches: for order-one couplings the permitted cutoff $\Lambda$ for this operator can be as low as $\Lambda \sim 1~{\rm TeV}$. We show how to improve this bound with collider cuts that allow a $b$-tagged Higgs plus dijet search in the Higgs to diphoton decay channel to exclude cutoffs as high as $\sim 6~{\rm TeV}$ at $2 \sigma$ with 3 $\text{ab}^{-1}$ of luminosity at the 14 TeV LHC. Cuts on the $p_T$ of the Higgs are key to this search, because the chromomagnetic dipole yields a non-standard fraction of boosted Higgses.