Precision measurement of the Higgs boson production cross sections and couplings in the WW decay channel with the CMS experiment at the LHC using the Run II data set

The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at the CERN LHC accelerator marked the final experimental confirmation of the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics, the theory that encodes our best understanding of fundamental particles and their interactions. Ten years after the discovery, Run 2 of the LHC has marked the transition to the precision era in the characterization of the Higgs boson. In this work I will present the measurement of the production cross sections and couplings of the Higgs boson in proton-proton collision events at a center of mass energy of 13 TeV, produced by the LHC. The analysis is performed on the data set collected by CMS during Run 2 of the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb−1. The focus is on events in which the Higgs boson decays to a pair of electroweak W bosons with opposite electric charge. This channel is characterized by a large branching ratio and relatively low-background final state, making it a prime candidate for precision characterization of the Higgs boson. The analysis is designed to tackle the four most probable production modes of a Higgs boson at the LHC, achieving 10% accuracy on the total Higgs boson production cross section. A second set of results is presented in terms of couplings of the Higgs boson to vector bosons and fermions, probing the structure of the Higgs sector of the SM to 5% accuracy. Finally, a measurement of 14 cross sections in the simplified template cross section framework is presented.