Boosting Higgs pair production in the $$b\bar{b}b\bar{b}$$ b b ¯ b b ¯ final state with multivariate techniques

Abstract

The measurement of Higgs pair production will be a cornerstone of the LHC program in the coming years. Double Higgs production provides a crucial window upon the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking and has a unique sensitivity to the Higgs trilinear coupling. We study the feasibility of a measurement of Higgs pair production in the b bb b final state at the LHC. Our analysis is based on a combination of traditional cut-based methods with stateof-the-art multivariate techniques. We account for all relevant backgrounds, including the contributions from light and charm jet mis-identification, which are ultimately comparable in size to the irreducible 4b QCD background. We demonstrate the robustness of our analysis strategy in a high pileup environment. For an integrated luminosity of L = 3 ab -1 , a signal significance of S/ B 3 is obtained, indicating that the b bb b final state alone could allow for the observation of double Higgs production at the High Luminosity LHC.