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Journal of High Energy Physics, 2023, 2023, 130
The first search for nonresonant production of Higgs boson pairs (HH) with
one H decaying into four leptons and the other into a pair of b quarks is presented, using
proton-proton collisions recorded at a center-of-mass energy of √s = 13TeV by the CMS
experiment. The analyzed data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb−¹. A 95%
confidence level upper limit of 32.4 is set on the signal strength modifier μ, defined as the
ratio of the observed HH production rate in the HH → ZZ*bb → 4ιbb decay channel to
the standard model (SM) expectation. Possible modifications of the H trilinear coupling
λHHH with respect to the SM value are investigated. The coupling modifier κλ, defined as
λHHH divided by its SM prediction, is constrained to be within the observed (expected)
range −8.8 (−9.8) < κλ < 13.4 (15.0) at 95% confidence level.