Study of the Mass and Spin-Parity of the Higgs Boson Candidate via Its Decays to Z Boson Pairs

Abstract

A study is presented of the mass and spin-parity of the new boson recently observed at the LHC at a mass near 125 GeV. An integrated luminosity of 17.3 fb−1, collected by the CMS experiment in proton-proton collisions at center-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV, is used. The measured mass in the ZZ channel, where both Z bosons decay to e or μ pairs, is 126.2 ± 0.6 (stat.) ± 0.2 (syst.) GeV. The angular distributions of the lepton pairs in this channel are sensitive to the spin-parity of the boson. Under the assumption of spin 0, the present data are consistent with the pure scalar hypothesis, while disfavoring the pure pseudoscalar hypothesis.