Search for Higgs boson decays to beyond-the-Standard-Model light bosons in four-lepton events with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Abstract

This thesis presents the search for the dark sector process h -> Zd Zd -> 4l in events collected by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider in 2015--2018. In this theorized process, the Standard Model Higgs boson (h) decays to four leptons via two intermediate Beyond-the-Standard-Model particles each called Zd. This process arises from interactions of the Standard Model with a dark sector. A dark sector consists of one or more new particles that have limited or zero interaction with the Standard Model, such as the new vector boson Zd (dark photon). It could have a rich and interesting phenomenology like the visible sector (the Standard Model) and could naturally address many outstanding problems in particle physics. For example, it could contain a particle candidate for dark matter. In particular, Higgs decays to Beyond-the-Standard-Model particles are well-motivated theoretically and are not tightly constrained; current measurements of Standard Model Higgs properties permit the fraction of such decays to be as high as approximately 30%. The results of this search do not show evidence for the existence of the h -> Zd Zd -> 4l process and are therefore interpreted in terms of upper limits on the branching ratio B(h -> Zd Zd) and the effective Higgs mixing parameter kappa^prime.