Study of (W/Z)H production and Higgs boson couplings using H→ W W * decays with the ATLAS detector
A search for Higgs boson production in association with a W or Z boson, in the H→ W W * decay channel, is performed with a data sample collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in proton-proton collisions at centre-of-mass energies \( \sqrt{s}=7 \) TeV and 8 TeV, corresponding to integrated luminosities of 4.5 fb -1 and 20.3 fb -1 , respectively. The WH production mode is studied in two-lepton and three-lepton final states, while two- lepton and four-lepton final states are used to search for the ZH production mode. The observed significance, for the combined W H and ZH production, is 2.5 standard deviations while a significance of 0.9 standard deviations is expected in the Standard Model Higgs boson hypothesis. The ratio of the combined W H and ZH signal yield to the Standard Model expectation, μ V H , is found to be μ V H = 3.0 -1.1 +1.3 (stat.) -0.7 +1.0 (sys.) for the Higgs boson mass of 125.36 GeV. The W H and ZH production modes are also combined with the gluon fusion and vector boson fusion production modes studied in the H → W W * → ℓνℓν decay channel, resulting in an overall observed significance of 6.5 standard deviations and μ ggF + VBF + VH = 1.16 -0.15 +0.16 (stat.) -0.15 +0.18 (sys.). The results are interpreted in terms of scaling factors of the Higgs boson couplings to vector bosons (κ V ) and fermions (κ F ); the combined results are: |κ V | = 1.06 -0.10 +0.10 , |κ F | = 0.85 -0.20 +0.26 .