Determining the masses of invisible particles: Application to Higgs boson invisible decay

Abstract

To know the total width of the recently discovered Higgs boson particle, it is important to measure the invisible decay width of the Higgs boson. However, the signal for this measurement at the LHC, i.e., a charged lepton pair and missing energy in the final state, cannot be definitely understood as the product of the intermediate produced $Z$ and $H$ bosons due to the possible interaction between dark matter and a $Z$ boson or quarks, which can be described by representative effective operators. First, we consider the relic abundance, the LUX direct detection experiment and the result of searching for Higgs boson invisible decay at the LEP and LHC to find the allowed parameter region for the effective operators. Then we investigate the transverse momentum distribution of the missing energy and propose two observables that can be used to distinguish the different underlying processes. Moreover, with these two observables, we may be able to determine the masses of invisible particles.

Comments: 10 pages, 8 figures, more discussion and references added, version published in Phys.Rev.D