Inclusive search for highly boosted Higgs bosons decaying to bottom quark-antiquark pairs in proton-proton collisions at s=13 TeV

A search for standard model Higgs bosons (H) produced with transverse momentum (p(T)) greater than 450 GeV and decaying to bottom quark-antiquark pairs (bb<overbar></mml:mover>) is performed using proton-proton collision data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC at <mml:msqrt>s</mml:msqrt> = 13 TeV. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 137 fb(-1). The search is inclusive in the Higgs boson production mode. Highly Lorentz-boosted Higgs bosons decaying to bb<overbar></mml:mover> are reconstructed as single large-radius jets, and are identified using jet substructure and a dedicated b tagging technique based on a deep neural network. The method is validated with Z -> bb<overbar></mml:mover> decays. For a Higgs boson mass of 125 GeV, an excess of events above the background assuming no Higgs boson production is observed with a local significance of 2.5 standard deviations (sigma), while the expectation is 0.7. The corresponding signal strength and local significance with respect to the standard model expectation are mu (H) = 3.7 1.2(stat)-0.7<mml:mo>+0.8(syst)<mml:mo>-0.5<mml:mo>+0.8(theo) and 1.9 sigma. Additionally, an unfolded differential cross section as a function of Higgs boson p(T) for the gluon fusion production mode is presented, assuming the other production modes occur at the expected rates.<fig id="Figa" position="anchor"><graphic position="anchor" specific-use="HTML" mime-subtype="JPEG" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="MediaObjects/13130_2020_14374_Figa_HTML.jpg" id="MO1"></graphic