Telling the spin of the 'Higgs boson' at the LHC

We assume that the Higgs boson or a possible resonance—playing a role in strongly interacting models of electroweak symmetry breaking—has been discovered at the LHC, and we propose a search strategy to determine its spin based on two simple asymmetries in the 𝑍⁢𝑍, 𝑊+⁢𝑊−, and 𝑡⁢ ‾ 𝑡 decay channels. We consider some benchmark values for its mass (above the 𝑍⁢𝑍 threshold, in the interval from 182  GeV/𝑐2 to 1  TeV/𝑐2) and discuss the relative advantages of the different decay processes. A full analysis, including the background, is given. For a center-of-mass energy of 14 TeV, we find that the lowest integrated luminosity required to discriminate between the different spins is, depending on the process and the resonance mass, between 40  fb−1 and 250  fb−1.