Constraints on the lifetime and width of the Higgs boson are obtained from $H\to ZZ\to 4\ell$ events using data recorded by the CMS experiment during the LHC run 1 with an integrated luminosity of 5.1 and $19.7{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$ at a center-of-mass energy of 7 and 8 TeV, respectively. The measurement of the Higgs boson lifetime is derived from its flight distance in the CMS detector with an upper bound of ${\tau }_H<1.9\times {10}^{-13}\mathrm{s}$ at the 95% confidence level (C.L.), corresponding to a lower bound on the width of ${\mathrm{\Gamma }}_H>3.5\times {10}^{-9}\mathrm{MeV}$. The measurement of the width is obtained from an off-shell production technique, generalized to include anomalous couplings of the Higgs boson to two electroweak bosons. From this measurement, a joint constraint is set on the Higgs boson width and a parameter $f_{\mathrm{\Lambda }Q}$ that expresses an anomalous coupling contribution as an on-shell cross-section fraction. The limit on the Higgs boson width is ${\mathrm{\Gamma }}_H<46\mathrm{MeV}$ with $f_{\mathrm{\Lambda }Q}$ unconstrained and ${\mathrm{\Gamma }}_H<26\mathrm{MeV}$ for $f_{\mathrm{\Lambda }Q}=0$ at the 95% C.L. The constraint $f_{\mathrm{\Lambda }Q}<3.8\times {10}^{-3}$ at the 95% C.L. is obtained for the expected standard model Higgs boson width.

• Received 23 July 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.92.072010

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© 2015 CERN, for the CMS