Search for Higgs Boson in UHE Cosmic Rays

Considering the SM Higgs boson mass in the range of (95–235) GeV, we present here a mechanism for indirect searches of this scalar in UHE cosmic rays interactions. The mechanism is the decay of Higgs bosons which are produced through bubble formation due to vacuum excitation in an UHE cosmic rays interactions with air nuclei. We develop a model of hadronic interaction based on algorithms of the GENCL code of the UA5 experiment of CERN and some physics of CORSIKA code (Karlsruhe report), incorporating a fraction of energy transfer to bubble formation through vacuum excitation and subsequent multiparticle production via conversion of Higgs boson to heavy fermion pairs. Such events are expected to have high multiplicity and excess muons. This mechanism has significant effect starting from E _P 10¹⁸eV. It is found that the average muon number decreases gradually upto 175 GeV Higgs boson mass and remain practically constant thereafter for all primary energies (E _P) above 10¹⁸ eV and for all fractions of energy transfer (f _e 0.01–0.5). The fluctuation of muon multiplicity decreases with E _P and increases very slowly with Higgs mass upto 175 GeV, remaining practically invariant thereafter.