Discriminating Higgs production mechanisms using jet energy profiles
We present a new tool for precision measurements of the Higgs boson production mechanisms at the LHC. We study events with a Higgs boson produced with two forward jets. Even with fairly stringent cuts, one expects a significant contamination of gluon fusion (GF) in addition to vector-boson fusion (VBF) in the event sample. By measuring the jet energy profile of the most central jet, we find that SM production can be distinguished from either pure VBF or pure GF at the 5 sigma level with 100 fb(-1) of luminosity at the 14 TeV LHC. Moreover, this discrimination technique can be used to validate or rule out new physics models that predict similar observable branching fractions as the 125 GeV Standard Model Higgs boson but have different production mechanisms.