Higgs Boson Decay to Light Jets at the LHC
  We study the Higgs boson $(h)$ decay to two light jets at the 14 TeV High-Luminosity-LHC (HL-LHC), where a light jet ($j$) represents any non-flavor tagged jet from the observational point of view. The decay mode $h\to gg$ is chosen as the benchmark since it is the dominant channel in the Standard Model (SM), but the bound obtained is also applicable to the light quarks $(j=u,d,s)$. We estimate the achievable bounds on the decay branching fractions through the associated production $Vh\ (V=W^\pm,Z)$. Events of the Higgs boson decaying into heavy (tagged) or light (un-tagged) jets are correlatively analyzed. We find that with 3000 fb$^{-1}$ data at the HL-LHC, we should expect approximately $1\sigma$ statistical significance on the SM $Vh(gg)$ signal in this channel. This corresponds to a reachable upper bound ${\rm BR}(h\to jj) \leq 4~ {\rm BR}^{SM}(h\to gg)$ at $95\%$ confidence level. A consistency fit also leads to an upper bound ${\rm BR}(h\to cc) < 15~ {\rm BR}^{SM}(h\to cc)$ at $95\%$ confidence level. The estimated bound may be further strengthened by adopting multiple variable analyses, or adding other production channels. 
Linda M. Carpenter, Tao Han, Khalida Hendricks, Zhuoni Qian, Ning Zhou
hep-ph hep-ex