Search for dark matter in association with a Higgs boson decaying to b-quarks in pp collisions at √s=13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Article history: Received 16 September 2016 Received in revised form 17 November 2016 Accepted 21 November 2016 Available online 24 November 2016 Editor: W.-D. Schlatter A search for dark matter pair production in association with a Higgs boson decaying to a pair of bottom quarks is presented, using 3.2 fb−1 of pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV collected by the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The decay of the Higgs boson is reconstructed as a high-momentum bb̄ system with either a pair of small-radius jets, or a single large-radius jet with substructure. The observed data are found to be consistent with the expected backgrounds. Results are interpreted using a simplified model with a Z ′ gauge boson mediating the interaction between dark matter and the Standard Model as well as a two-Higgs-doublet model containing an additional Z ′ boson which decays to a Standard Model Higgs boson and a new pseudoscalar Higgs boson, the latter decaying into a pair of dark matter particles. © 2016 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by SCOAP3.