Direct constraint on the Higgs–charm coupling from a search for Higgs boson decays into charm quarks with the ATLAS detector

A search for the Higgs boson decaying into a pair of charm quarks is presented. The analysis uses proton–proton collisions to target the production of a Higgs boson in association with a leptonically decaying W or Z boson. The dataset delivered by the LHC at a centre-of-mass energy of sqrt(s) = 13 TeV and recorded by the ATLAS detector corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb−1. Flavourtagging algorithms are used to identify jets originating from the hadronisation of charm quarks. The analysis method is validated with the simultaneous measurement of W W, W Z and Z Z production, with observed (expected) significances of 2.6 (2.2) standard deviations above the background-only prediction for the (W/Z)Z(→ cc¯) process and 3.8 (4.6) standard deviations for the (W/Z)W(→ cq) process. The (W/Z)H(→ cc¯)search yields an observed (expected) upper limit of 26 (31) times the predicted Standard Model crosssection times branching fraction for a Higgs boson with a mass of 125 GeV, corresponding to an observed (expected) constraint on the charm Yukawa coupling modifier |κc| < 8.5 (12.4), at the 95% confidence level. A combination with the ATLAS (W/Z)H, H → bb¯ analysis is performed, allowing the ratio κc/κb to be constrained to less than 4.5 at the 95% confidence level, smaller than the ratio of the b- and c-quark masses, and therefore determines the Higgs-charm coupling to be weaker than the Higgs-bottom coupling at the 95% confidence level.