Improved Constraints on the Heavy Gauge Bosons Decaying into a Vector Boson and a Higgs Boson at the LHC

Abstract

The full CMS and ATLAS Run 2 datasets with time-integrated luminosity of 137 and 139 fb−1 in the diboson channels are used to probe benchmark models with extended gauge sectors such as left-right symmetric (LR) and the sequential standard model (extended gauge model, EGM), that predict the existence of neutral Z0 - and charged W0 - bosons decaying to a pair of bosons ZH and WH in the semileptonic final state. These benchmark models are used to interpret the results. Exclusion limits at the 95% C.L. on the Z 0 and W0 resonance production cross section times branching ratio to electroweak gauge boson pairs in the resonance mass range between 1.0 and 5 TeV are here converted to constraints on Z-Z0 and W-W0 mixing parameters and masses. We present exclusion regions on the parameter spaces of the Z 0 and W0 and show that the obtained exclusion regions are significantly extended compared to those derived from the previous analysis performed with Tevatron data as well as with the CMS and ATLAS data collected at 7 and 8 TeV in Run 1. The reported limits are the most restrictive to date.