Search for heavy higgs bosons a/h decaying to a top quark pair in p p collisions at s = 8 tev with the atlas detector

Abstract

A search for heavy pseudoscalar (A) and scalar (H) Higgs bosons decaying into a top quark pair (tt¯) has been performed with 20.3 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data collected by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at a center-of-mass energy of s = 8 TeV. Interference effects between the signal process and Standard Model tt¯ production, which are expected to distort the signal shape from a single peak to a peak–dip structure, are taken into account. No significant deviation from the Standard Model prediction is observed in the tt¯ invariant mass spectrum in final states with an electron or muon, large missing transverse momentum, and at least four jets. The results are interpreted within the context of a type-II two-Higgs-doublet model. Exclusion limits on the signal strength are derived as a function of the mass mA/H and the ratio of the vacuum expectation values of the two Higgs fields, tan β, for mA/H > 500 GeV.