Tests of BSM Higgs interactions by the combination $({\kappa }_V^2-{\kappa }_{2V})$ in HHjj production at LHC

Abstract

In this work, we study the potential of analyzing the particular combination of $\kappa$ modifiers given by ${\kappa }_V^2-{\kappa }_{2V}$ to disentangle Beyond Standard Model Higgs signals in double Higgs production with two extra light jets at LHC. We use the Higgs Effective Field Theory approach, HEFT, for the gauge invariant description of these two ${\kappa }_V$ and ${\kappa }_{2V}$ parameters representing the BSM interactions of the Higgs particle with the electroweak gauge bosons, $HVV$ and $HHVV$ respectively. We illustrate the bonus of studying this particular combination ${\kappa }_V^2-{\kappa }_{2V}$ focusing in just one process, $HHjj$, instead of studying ${\kappa }_V$ and ${\kappa }_{2V}$ separately using various processes. For the detailed analysis here, we focus on the particular final state $H(\to \gamma \gamma )H(\to b\bar{b})j{j}^{\prime }$, with two photons, two b-jets and two light jets, which we analyze fully including parton showering, fragmentation, hadronization and detector effects, in both signal and main background. We find that the sensitivity to ${\kappa }_V^2-{\kappa }_{2V}$ could be notably improved at the HL-LHC by the proper cuts on the final state $b\bar{b}\gamma \gamma j{j}^{\prime }$ that select optimally the events with VBF-topology and $HH$-topology. In particular, we propose strategies based on a good isolation of $\gamma \gamma$ and b-jet pairs, and focus specially on specific variables like ${\eta }_{\gamma \gamma }$ and $P_{\gamma \gamma }^T$ where the signal events distributions may efficiently discriminate between BSM signal versus SM background. We will show here how the high transversality of these two pairs in the signal (inherited from the high transversality of the $H$'s) is correlated with the non-vanishing value of this $({\kappa }_V^2-{\kappa }_{2V})$ combination.

Comments: 39 pages including 17 figures, 1 appendix and references. Version published in PRD 2026