LHC search for di-Higgs decays of stoponium and other scalars in events with two photons and two bottom jets

Abstract

We study the prospects for LHC discovery of a narrow resonance that decays to two Higgs bosons, using the final state of two photons and two bottom jets. Our work is motivated in part by a scenario in which two-body flavor-preserving decays of the top squark are kinematically forbidden. Stoponium, a hadronic bound state of the top squark and its anti-particle, will then form, and may have a large branching fraction into the two Higgs boson final state. We estimate the cross-section needed for a 5-sigma discovery at the 14 TeV LHC for such a narrow di-Higgs resonance, using the invariant mass distributions of the final state bottom jets and photons, as a function of the integrated luminosity. The results are also applicable to any other di-Higgs resonance produced by gluon fusion.

Comments: 15 pages v3:Modified cuts on photon pT's and fake photon backgrounds added