Monte-Carlo study of Higgs boson production in association with a single top quark at 13 TeV

Abstract

We analyze the possibility to discover the production of a Higgs boson in association with a single top quark at the LHC. Such process is strongly suppressed in the Standard Model. An observation of this production mode would be an unambiguous indication of the New Physics providing an important insight on the nature of the Higgs mechanism. The production is sensitive to the relative sign of the coupling parameters describing Higgs interaction with fermions and gauge bosons. Our analysis considers single top quark production via t-channel using Higgs boson decays to a bottom quark-antiquark pair and semileptonic top quark decays. We present a Monte-Carlo study of the pp → Hbq process and discuss the experimental signatures that can help to discover it at the LHC. Two scenarios have been considered, the Standard Model case and the Inverted Top Coupling scenario.