Prospects for the Measurement of the Structure of the Coupling of a Higgs Boson to Weak Gauge Bosons in Weak Boson Fusion with the ATLAS Detector

Abstract

The prospects for the measurement of the tensor structure of the vertex between a standard model Higgs boson and two weak gauge bosons using the distribution of the azimuthal angles between the two tagging jets in the weak boson fusion channel are studied in a Monte Carlo analysis using the fast simulation of the ATLAS detector. The decay channels $H \rightarrow \tau^+\tau^- \rightarrow ll+4\nu$, $H \rightarrow \tau^+\tau^- \rightarrow lh + 3\nu$ at $m_{H} = 120\,$GeV and $H \rightarrow W^+W^- \rightarrow ll\nu\nu$ at $m_H = 160\,$GeV are used in the analysis. For a standard model Higgs boson it is found that purely anomalous couplings are expected to be excluded at a confidence level corresponding to 2\,$\sigma$ or more at $m_H = 120\,$GeV and more than 5\,$\sigma$ at $m_H = 160\,$GeV from $30\,$fb$^{-1}$ of data. With a value of 1 roughly reproducing the standard model cross section for a purely anomalous coupling, the standard deviation in a measurement of a contribution of a CP even anomalous coupling in addition to the standard model coupling is estimated to be 0.20 at $m_H = 120\,$GeV and 0.08 at $m_H = 160\,$GeV