Probing the Higgs self coupling via single Higgs production at the LHC

Abstract

We propose a method to determine the trilinear Higgs self coupling that is alternative to the direct measurement of Higgs pair production total cross sections and differential distributions. The method relies on the effects that electroweak loops featuring an anomalous trilinear coupling would imprint on single Higgs production at the LHC. We first calculate these contributions to all the phenomenologically relevant Higgs production ($gg\mathrm{F}$, VBF, $WH$, $ZH$, $t\bar{t}H$) and decay ($\gamma \gamma$, $W{W}^{\ast }/Z{Z}^{\ast }\to 4f$, $b\bar{b}$, $\tau \tau$) modes at the LHC and then estimate the sensitivity to the trilinear coupling via a one-parameter fit to the single Higgs measurements at the LHC 8 TeV. We find that the bounds on the self coupling are already competitive with those from Higgs pair production and will be further improved in the current and next LHC runs.

Comments: 34 pages, 13 figures, 5 tables; V2: New appendix A added on the comparison with the Effective Field Theory approach; V3: Journal version