Top quark loops in Higgs production via gluon fusion at large invariant final state masses can induce important interference effects in searches for additional Higgs bosons as predicted in, e.g., Higgs portal scenarios and the minimal supersymmetric Standard Model when the heavy scalar is broad or the final state resolution is poor. Currently, the limit setting as performed by both ATLAS and CMS is based on injecting a heavy Higgs-like signal neglecting interference effects. In this paper, we perform a study of such “on-shell” interference effects in $pp\to ZZ$ and find that they lead to a $\lesssim \mathcal{O}(30\%)$ width scheme-dependent modification of the signal strength. Including the continuum contributions to obtain, e.g., the full $pp\to ZZ\to 4\ell$ final state, this modification is reduced to the 10% level in the considered intermediate mass range.

• Received 9 March 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.91.074029