- Accepted Paper
Search for nonresonant triple Higgs boson production in the final state with six bottom quarks in proton-proton collisions at = 13 TeV
Phys. Rev. Lett. - Accepted 19 October, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/2zxk-9yvw
Phys. Rev. Lett. - Accepted 19 October, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/2zxk-9yvw
A search for nonresonant triple Higgs boson (HHH) production in the final state with six bottom quarks is performed using proton-proton collisions at = 13 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb recorded by the CMS experiment. No significant excess of events over the background prediction is seen. Observed (expected) 95% confidence level upper limits on the signal cross section are set at 44 (43) fb, corresponding to 588 (572) times the standard model expectation. The HHH process is directly sensitive to both the trilinear and quartic Higgs self-couplings. The observed (expected) constraint on the quartic coupling modifier is $-$177 185 ($-$180 190), assuming = 1. The corresponding constraint on the trilinear coupling modifier is $-$7.4 12.4 ($-$6.4 11.2), assuming = 1. This analysis provides the most stringent constraint to date on nonresonant HHH production and excludes, for the first time, part of the space allowed by the perturbative unitarity bound.
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