Evidence for Higgs Boson Decays to the $\tau^+\tau^-$ Final State with the ATLAS Detector

After the discovery of a Higgs boson in the bosonic final states in 2012, the search for fermionic decay modes plays a crucial role in the identification of this particle as the Higgs boson of the Standard Model. Tau leptons, as the heaviest charged leptons, do contribute significantly to the decay width of the Higgs boson with a mass of $m_H = 125.5$ GeV. Recent results on the search for Higgs boson decays to the $\tau^+\tau^-$ final state with the ATLAS detector are presented based on data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of $21$ fb$^{-1}$ collected at $\sqrt{s}=8$ TeV. An excess of events with an observed (expected) significance corresponding to 4.1 (3.2) standard deviations ($\sigma$) is found. This provides evidence for $H\rightarrow\tau^+\tau^-$ decays consistent with the Standard Model expectation for a Higgs boson with $m_H=125\textrm{ GeV}$.