- Open Access
Probing new physics in the boosted channel at the LHC
Phys. Rev. D 113, 115040 – Published 15 June, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/ht57-rqz6
Abstract
This paper presents the first dedicated study of the boosted topology as a key probe of physics beyond the Standard Model (SM) in the high-energy double-Higgs boson regime. The analysis presented in this paper focuses on two classes of new-physics scenarios: nonresonant deviations of the quartic gauge-Higgs interaction, parametrized by the coupling modifier , and resonant enhancement arising from the decay of a heavy scalar state, modeled within a two-Higgs-doublet framework. We demonstrate that the boosted reconstruction category enhances sensitivity to beyond SM effects that populate the high- tail, yielding improved constraints on and extending the discovery reach for heavy resonances.
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Article Text
References (74)
- G. Aad et al. (ATLAS Collaboration), Observation of a new particle in the search for the standard model Higgs boson with the ATLAS detector at the LHC, Phys. Lett. B 716, 1 (2012).
- S. Chatrchyan et al. (CMS Collaboration), Observation of a new boson at a mass of 125 GeV with the CMS experiment at the LHC, Phys. Lett. B 716, 30 (2012).
- P. W. Higgs, Broken symmetries, massless particles and gauge fields, Phys. Lett. 12, 132 (1964).
- F. Englert and R. Brout, Broken symmetry and the mass of gauge vector mesons, Phys. Rev. Lett. 13, 321 (1964).
- P. W. Higgs, Broken symmetries and the masses of gauge bosons, Phys. Rev. Lett. 13, 508 (1964).
- G. Aad et al. (ATLAS Collaboration), Combined measurement of the Higgs boson mass from the and decay channels with the ATLAS detector using , 8, and 13 TeV pp collision data, Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 251802 (2023).
- A. Hayrapetyan et al. (CMS Collaboration), Measurement of the Higgs boson mass and width using the four-lepton final state in proton-proton collisions at , Phys. Rev. D 111, 092014 (2025).
- R. L. Workman et al. (Particle Data Group), Review of particle physics, Prog. Theor. Exp. Phys. 2022, 083C01 (2022).
- S. Weinberg, Gauge and global symmetries at high temperature, Phys. Rev. D 9, 3357 (1974).
- M. Laine, Electroweak phase transition beyond the standard model, in 4th International Conference on Strong and Electroweak Matter (2000), pp. 58–69, arXiv:hep-ph/0010275.
- R. Li, X.-M. Shen, B.-W. Wang, K. Wang, and G. Zhu, Probing the trilinear Higgs boson self-coupling via single Higgs production at the LHeC, Phys. Rev. D 101, 075036 (2020).
- H. T. Li, Z.-G. Si, J. Wang, X. Zhang, and D. Zhao, Improved constraints on Higgs boson self-couplings with quartic and cubic power dependencies of the cross section*, Chin. Phys. C 49, 023107 (2025).
- T. D. Lee, A theory of spontaneous violation, Phys. Rev. D 8, 1226 (1973).
- G. C. Branco, P. M. Ferreira, L. Lavoura, M. N. Rebelo, M. Sher, and J. P. Silva, Theory and phenomenology of two-Higgs-doublet models, Phys. Rep. 516, 1 (2012).
- H. E. Haber and O. Stål, New LHC benchmarks for the -conserving two-Higgs-doublet model, Eur. Phys. J. C 75, 491 (2015); 76, 312(E) (2016).
- C.-Y. Chen, M. Freid, and M. Sher, Next-to-minimal two Higgs doublet model, Phys. Rev. D 89, 075009 (2014).
- M. Muhlleitner, M. O. P. Sampaio, R. Santos, and J. Wittbrodt, The N2HDM under theoretical and experimental scrutiny, J. High Energy Phys. 03 (2017) 094.
- G. Chalons and F. Domingo, Analysis of the Higgs potentials for two doublets and a singlet, Phys. Rev. D 86, 115024 (2012).
- T. Robens, T. Stefaniak, and J. Wittbrodt, Two-real-scalar-singlet extension of the SM: LHC phenomenology and benchmark scenarios, Eur. Phys. J. C 80, 151 (2020).
- A. Djouadi, The anatomy of electro-weak symmetry breaking. II. The Higgs bosons in the minimal supersymmetric model, Phys. Rep. 459, 1 (2008).
- J. F. Gunion and H. E. Haber, Higgs bosons in supersymmetric models. 1., Nucl. Phys. B272, 1 (1986); B402, 567(E) (1993).
- J. F. Gunion and H. E. Haber, Higgs bosons in supersymmetric models. 2. Implications for phenomenology, Nucl. Phys. B278, 449 (1986); B402, 569(E) (1993).
- G. Degrassi, S. Heinemeyer, W. Hollik, P. Slavich, and G. Weiglein, Towards high precision predictions for the MSSM Higgs sector, Eur. Phys. J. C 28, 133 (2003).
- M. Maniatis, The next-to-minimal supersymmetric extension of the standard model reviewed, Int. J. Mod. Phys. A 25, 3505 (2010).
- U. Ellwanger, C. Hugonie, and A. M. Teixeira, The next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model, Phys. Rep. 496, 1 (2010).
- S. F. King, M. Muhlleitner, and R. Nevzorov, NMSSM Higgs benchmarks near 125 GeV, Nucl. Phys. B860, 207 (2012).
- L. Da Rold, M. Epele, A. Medina, N. I. Mileo, and A. Szynkman, Enhancement of the double Higgs production via leptoquarks at the LHC, J. High Energy Phys. 08 (2021) 100.
- L. Da Rold, M. Epele, A. D. Medina, N. I. Mileo, and A. Szynkman, Double Higgs production at the HL-LHC: Probing a loop-enhanced model with kinematical distributions, J. High Energy Phys. 05 (2024) 072.
- J. Davies, K. Schönwald, M. Steinhauser, and H. Zhang, Analytic next-to-leading order Yukawa and Higgs boson self-coupling corrections to at high energies, J. High Energy Phys. 04 (2025) 193.
- L. Da Rold, M. Epele, A. D. Medina, N. I. Mileo, and A. Szynkman, Exploring enhanced non-resonant di-Higgs production at the HL-LHC with neural networks, arXiv:2511.15897.
- M. Grazzini, G. Heinrich, S. Jones, S. Kallweit, M. Kerner, J. M. Lindert, and J. Mazzitelli, Higgs boson pair production at NNLO with top quark mass effects, J. High Energy Phys. 05 (2018) 059.
- J. Baglio, F. Campanario, S. Glaus, M. Mühlleitner, J. Ronca, and M. Spira, : Combined uncertainties, Phys. Rev. D 103, 056002 (2021).
- F. A. Dreyer and A. Karlberg, Vector-boson fusion Higgs pair production at , Phys. Rev. D 98, 114016 (2018).
- F. A. Dreyer, A. Karlberg, J.-N. Lang, and M. Pellen, Precise predictions for double-Higgs production via vector-boson fusion, Eur. Phys. J. C 80, 1037 (2020).
- G. Aad et al. (ATLAS Collaboration), Studies of new Higgs boson interactions through nonresonant HH production in the final state in pp collisions at with the ATLAS detector, J. High Energy Phys. 01 (2024) 066.
- G. Aad et al. (ATLAS Collaboration), Constraints on the Higgs boson self-coupling from single- and double-Higgs production with the ATLAS detector using pp collisions at , Phys. Lett. B 843, 137745 (2023).
- G. Aad et al. (ATLAS Collaboration), Combination of searches for Higgs boson pair production in pp collisions at with the ATLAS detector, Phys. Rev. Lett. 133, 101801 (2024).
- A. Hayrapetyan et al. (CMS Collaboration), Constraints on the Higgs boson self-coupling from the combination of single and double Higgs boson production in proton-proton collisions at , Phys. Lett. B 861, 139210 (2025).
- D. de Florian et al. (LHC Higgs Cross Section Working Group), Handbook of LHC Higgs cross sections: 4. Deciphering the nature of the Higgs sector, CERN Yellow Rep. Monogr. 2, 1 (2017).
- G. Aad et al. (ATLAS Collaboration), Search for Higgs boson pair production in the two bottom quarks plus two photons final state in collisions at with the ATLAS detector, Phys. Rev. D 106, 052001 (2022).
- G. Aad et al. (ATLAS Collaboration), Study of Higgs boson pair production in the final state with of data collected at and 13.6 TeV by the ATLAS experiment, Report No. CERN-EP-2025-140, 2025, arXiv:2507.03495.
- A. Hayrapetyan et al. (CMS Collaboration), Constraints on the Higgs boson self-coupling from the combination of single and double Higgs boson production in proton-proton collisions at , Phys. Lett. B 861, 139210 (2025).
- A. Adhikary, R. K. Barman, and B. Bhattacherjee, Prospects of non-resonant di-Higgs searches and Higgs boson self-coupling measurement at the HE-LHC using machine learning techniques, J. High Energy Phys. 12 (2020) 179.
- Y. Wu, L. Xiao, and Y. Zhang, Deep learning to improve the sensitivity of Higgs pair searches in the channel at the LHC, Chin. Phys. C 50, 033105 (2026).
- M. Belfkir, M. A. Loualidi, and S. Nasri, Boosting sensitivity to with graph neural networks and XGBoost, Prog. Theor. Exp. Phys. 2025, 123B04 (2025).
- M. Ait Haddou, M. Belfkir, and S. E. E. Harrauss, From qubits to couplings: A hybrid quantum machine learning framework for LHC Physics, arXiv:2511.15672.
- H. Qu and L. Gouskos, ParticleNet: Jet tagging via particle clouds, Phys. Rev. D 101, 056019 (2020).
- J. Guo, J. Li, T. Li, and R. Zhang, Boosted Higgs boson jet reconstruction via a graph neural network, Phys. Rev. D 103, 116025 (2021).
- A. Hammad, S. Moretti, A. P. Przybyl, and H. Waltari, Interference effects in resonant standard model di-Higgs production and decay into final states: The role of machine learning analysis, arXiv:2512.12318.
- A. Tumasyan et al. (CMS Collaboration), Search for nonresonant pair production of highly energetic Higgs bosons decaying to bottom quarks, Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 041803 (2023).
- R. K. Barman, C. Englert, D. Gonçalves, and M. Spannowsky, Di-Higgs resonance searches in weak boson fusion, Phys. Rev. D 102, 055014 (2020).
- S. Alioli, P. Nason, C. Oleari, and E. Re, A general framework for implementing NLO calculations in shower Monte Carlo programs: The POWHEG BOX, J. High Energy Phys. 06 (2010) 043.
- J. Alwall, R. Frederix, S. Frixione, V. Hirschi, F. Maltoni, O. Mattelaer, H. S. Shao, T. Stelzer, P. Torrielli, and M. Zaro, The automated computation of tree-level and next-to-leading order differential cross sections, and their matching to parton shower simulations, J. High Energy Phys. 07 (2014) 079.
- C. Bierlich et al., A comprehensive guide to the physics and usage of PYTHIA 8, SciPost Phys. Codebases 2022, 8 (2022).
- J. de Favereau, C. Delaere, P. Demin, A. Giammanco, V. Lemaître, A. Mertens, and M. Selvaggi (DELPHES 3 Collaboration), DELPHES 3, A modular framework for fast simulation of a generic collider experiment, J. High Energy Phys. 02 (2014) 057.
- G. Aad et al. (ATLAS Collaboration), Measurement of photon identification efficiency using radiative z decays using 2022-2024 collision data at the atlas experiment, https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PLOTS/EGAM-2025-03/.
- M. Cacciari, G. P. Salam, and G. Soyez, The anti- jet clustering algorithm, J. High Energy Phys. 04 (2008) 063.
- M. Cacciari, G. P. Salam, and G. Soyez, FastJet user manual, Eur. Phys. J. C 72, 1896 (2012).
- G. Aad et al. (ATLAS Collaboration), Transforming jet flavour tagging at ATLAS, Nat. Commun. 17, 541 (2026).
- D. Krohn, J. Thaler, and L.-T. Wang, Jet trimming, J. High Energy Phys. 02 (2010) 084.
- A. J. Larkoski, S. Marzani, G. Soyez, and J. Thaler, Soft drop, J. High Energy Phys. 05 (2014) 146.
- I. Moult, L. Necib, and J. Thaler, New angles on energy correlation functions, J. High Energy Phys. 12 (2016) 153.
- G. Aad et al. (ATLAS Collaboration), Efficiency corrections for a tagger for boosted decays in collisions at with the ATLAS detector, Technical Report, CERN, Geneva, 2021, all figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PUBNOTES/ATL-PHYS-PUB-2021-035.
- G. Aad et al. (ATLAS Collaboration), The ATLAS trigger system for lhc run 3 and trigger performance in 2022, https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/TRIG-2022-01.
- G. Aad et al. (ATLAS Collaboration), Measurement of the Higgs boson mass from the and channels with the ATLAS detector using of collision data, Phys. Rev. D 90, 052004 (2014).
- T. Chen and C. Guestrin, Xgboost: A scalable tree boosting system, KDD ’16: Proceedings of the 22nd ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (Association for Computing Machinery, San Francisco, California, USA, 2016), pp. 785–794.
- G. C. Strong, On the impact of selected modern deep-learning techniques to the performance and celerity of classification models in an experimental high-energy physics use case, Mach. Learn. Sci. Tech. 1, 045006 (2020).
- X. Developer, Xgboost parameters, https://xgboost.readthedocs.io/en/latest/parameter.html.
- G. Cowan, K. Cranmer, E. Gross, and O. Vitells, Asymptotic formulae for likelihood-based tests of new physics, Eur. Phys. J. C 71, 1554 (2011); 73, 2501(E) (2013).
- M. Feickert, L. Heinrich, and G. Stark, pyhf: A pure-python statistical fitting library with tensors and automatic differentiation, Proc. Sci., ICHEP2022 (2022) 245 [arXiv:2211.15838].
- G. Aad et al. (CMS, ATLAS Collaboration), Combination of ATLAS and CMS searches for Higgs boson pair production at , arXiv:2602.23991.
- A. M. Sirunyan et al. (CMS Collaboration), Search for nonresonant Higgs boson pair production in final states with two bottom quarks and two photons in proton-proton collisions at , J. High Energy Phys. 03 (2021) 257.
- G. Aad et al. (ATLAS Collaboration), Combination of searches for resonant Higgs boson pair production using pp collisions at with the ATLAS detector, Phys. Rev. Lett. 132, 231801 (2024).
- M. Belfkir, Signal and backgrounds for the double Higgs boson decaying to two photons and two b-quarks at 13.6 TeV, 10.5281/zenodo.18368339 (2026).