Higgs Boson Decay to Light Jets at the LHC

We study the Higgs boson decay to two light jets at the 14 TeV High-Luminosity-LHC (HL-LHC), where a light jet represents any non-flavor tagged jet from the observational point of view. The decay mode h → gg is chosen as the benchmark since it is the dominant channel in the Standard Model, but the bound obtained is also applicable to the light quarks (j = u, d, s). We estimate the achievable bounds on the decay branching fractions through the associated production V h (V = W ± , Z). Events of the Higgs boson decaying into heavy (tagged) or light (un-tagged) jets are correlatively analyzed. We find that with 3000 fb −1 data at the HL-LHC, we should expect approximately 1σ statistical significance on the SM V h(gg) signal in this channel. This corresponds to a reachable upper bound BR(h → jj) ≤ 4 BR SM (h → gg) at 95% confidence level.​