Exotic Higgs decays in the golden channel

Abstract: The Higgs boson may have decay channels that are not predicted by the Standard Model. We discuss the prospects of probing exotic Higgs decays at the LHC using the 4-lepton final state. We study two specific scenarios, with new particles appearing in the intermediate state of the 4-lepton Higgs decay. In one, Higgs decays to a Z boson and a new massive gauge boson, the so-called hidden photon. In the other, Higgs decays to an electron or a muon and a new vector-like fermion. We argue that the upcoming LHC run will be able to explore a new parameter space of these models that is allowed by current precision constraints. Employing matrix element methods, we use the full information contained in the differential distribution of the 4-lepton final state to extract the signal of exotic decays. We find that, in some cases, the LHC can be sensitive to new physics even when the correction to the total 4-lepton Higgs rate is of the order of a percent. In particular, for the simplest realization of the hidden photon with the mass between 15 and 65 GeV, new parameter space can be explored in the LHC run-II.