Directly measuring the tensor structure of the scalar coupling to gauge

Kinematic distributions in the decays of the newly discovered resonance to four leptons can provide a direct measurement of the tensor structure of the particle's couplings to gauge bosons. Even if the particle is shown to be a parity even scalar, measuring this tensor structure is a necessary step in determining if this particle is responsible for giving mass to the Z. We consider a Standard Model-like coupling as well as coupling via a dimension five operator to either ZZ or Z gamma. We show that using full kinematic information from each event allows discrimination between renormalizable and higher dimensional coupling to ZZ at the 95% confidence level with O(50) signal events, and coupling to Z gamma can be distinguished with as few as 20 signal events. This shows that these measurements can be useful possibly even with this year's LHC data. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.86.117504