Aram Hayrapetyan, A. Tumasyan, W. Adam, Janik Walter Andrejkovic, L. Benato, Thomas Bergauer, S. Chatterjee, K. Damanakis, M. Dragicevic, Priya Sajid Hussain, M. Jeitler, Natascha Krammer, Ang Li, D. Liko, Ivan Mikulec, J. Schieck, Dennis Schwarz, R. Schöfbeck, M. Sonawane, W. Waltenberger, Claudia-Elisabeth Wulz, X. Janssen, T. Van Laer, P. Van Mechelen, Nordin Breugelmans, Jorgen d'Hondt, Soumya Dansana, A. De Moor, M. Delcourt, Felix Heyen, Steven Lowette, I. Makarenko, D. Müller, Stefaan Tavernier, M. Tytgat, G. P. Van Onsem, S. Van Putte, D. Vannerom, Bugra Bilin, Barbara Clerbaux, Aloke Kumar Das, Isabelle de Bruyn, G. De Lentdecker, Hugues Evard, Laurent Favart, P. Gianneios, J. Jaramillo, Ali Khalilzadeh, Fakhri Alam Khan, K. Lee, A. Malara, Muhammad Aamir Shahzad, Laurent Thomas, M. Vanden Bemden, C. Vander Velde, P. Vanlaer, M. De Coen, Didar Dobur, G. Gökbulut, Yanwen Hong, J. Knolle, Luka Lambrecht, David Marckx, K. Mota Amarilo, K. Skovpen, N. Van Den Bossche, Jan van der Linden, Liam Wezenbeek, Samuel Bein, Anna Benecke, Agni Bethani, G. Bruno, C. Caputo, J. De Favereau De Jeneret, C. Delaere, I. S. Donertas, A. Giammanco, Ahmet Oguz Guzel, Sandhya Jain, Vincent Lemaître, J. Lidrych, Paola Mastrapasqua, Tu Thong Tran, Semra Turkcapar, G. A. Alves, E. Coelho, Gilson Correia Silva, Carsten Hensel, T. Menezes De Oliveira, C. Mora Herrera, P. Rebello Teles, Mariana Soeiro, E. J. Tonelli Manganote, A. Vilela Pereira, W. L. Aldá Júnior, M. Barroso Ferreira Filho, H. Brandao Malbouisson, W. Carvalho, Jose Chinellato, E. M. Da Costa
A bstract The results of a search for the production of two scalar bosons in final states with two photons and two tau leptons are presented. The search considers both nonresonant production of a Higgs boson pair, HH, and resonant production via a new boson X which decays either to HH or to H and a new scalar Y. The analysis uses up to 138 fb − 1 of proton-proton collision data, recorded between 2016 and 2018 by the CMS experiment at the LHC at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. No evidence for signal is found in the data. For the nonresonant production, the observed (expected) upper limit at 95% confidence level (CL) on the HH production cross section is set at 930 (740) fb, corresponding to 33 (26) times the standard model prediction. At 95% CL, HH production is observed (expected) to be excluded for values of κ λ outside the range between −12 (−9.4) and 17 (15). Observed (expected) upper limits at 95% CL for the X → HH cross section are found to be within 160 to 2200 (200 to 1800) fb, depending on the mass of X. In the X → Y(ττ)H(γγ) search, the observed (expected) upper limits on the product of the production cross section and decay branching fractions vary between 0.059–1.2 fb (0.087–0.68 fb). For the X → Y(γγ)H(ττ) search the observed (expected) upper limits on the product of the production cross section and Y → γγ branching fraction vary between 0.69–15 fb (0.73–8.3 fb) in the low Y mass search, tightening constraints on the next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model, and between 0.64–10 fb (0.70–7.6 fb) in the high Y mass search.