Observation of the Higgs boson and measurement of its properties in the HWW* channel with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

The Higgs boson decays to WW* is observed based on an excess of events over background of 6.1 standard deviations in the dilepton final state including all flavour channels (ee/μμ and eμ/μe) and jet multiplicity categories (nj = 0, 1,≥ 2), where theStandard Model expectation is 5.8 standard deviations. Evidence for thevector-boson fusion (VBF) production process is also obtained with a significance of3.2 standard deviations. The different favour channels eμ/μe have the best expected signal sensitivity. The low jet multiplicity categories are dominantly contributed by the gluon-gluon fusion (ggF) production process whereas the large jet multiplicity category has the best sensitivity to the VBF production process. The results are obtained from proton-proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS detector at the LHC, corresponding to 4.5fb-1 at √s = 7TeV and 20.3fb-1 at √s = 8TeV. The background contribution in each channel and jet multiplicity category varies and is determined mostly with data-driven techniques with dedicated control or validation regions. The dominant background processes are the continuum WW and top quark productions. In the same flavour channels (ee/μμ), the Drell-Yan process is another important background source. For a Higgs boson mass of 125.36GeV, the ratio of the measured value to the expected value of the total production cross section times branching ratio fraction is 1.09+0.16-0.15 (stat.) +0.17-0.14 (syst.). The corresponding ratios for the gluon fusion and vector-boson fusion production modes are 1.02 ± 0.19 (stat.)+0.22−0.18 (syst.) and 1.27+0.44-0.40 (stat.) +0.30-0.21 (syst.), respectively. At √s = 8TeV, the total production cross section is measured to beσ(gg → H → WW*) = 4.6±0.9 (stat.)+0.8−0.7 (syst.) pb σ(VBFH → WW*) = 0.51+0.17−0.15 (stat.)+0.13−0.08 (syst.) pb. The fiducial cross section is determined for the gluon-fusion process in exclusive final states with zero and one associated jet. In addition to the on-shell couplings, other properties of the Higgs boson, namely the spin quantum number and the total decay width, are also studied using the 8TeV data and the different flavour channels only. The spin study is based on the on-shell dominated event sample using the nj ≤ 1 jet categories. The Standard Model spin-parity JCP = 0++ hypothesis is compared with alternative hypotheses. The data are found to be consistent with the Standard Model and limits are placed on alternative spin hypotheses.The off-shell events in the high mass tail from the inclusive jet category are then used to measure the off-shell couplings and impose a constraint on the upper limit of the total width of the Higgs boson indirectly, when certain assumptions are made.