Search for lepton flavour violating decays of the Higgs boson to $\mu\tau$ and e$\tau$ in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=$ 13 TeV

Understand

A search for lepton flavour violating decays of the Higgs boson in the $\mu\tau$ and e$\tau$ decay modes is presented.

• The search is based on a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb$^{-1}$ of proton-proton collisions collected with the CMS detector in 2016, at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV.
• No significant excess over the standard model expectation is observed.
• The observed (expected) upper limits on the lepton flavour violating branching fractions of the Higgs boson are $\mathcal{B}$(H$\to\mu\tau$) < 0.25% (0.25%) and $\mathcal{B}$(H$\to$e$\tau$) < 0.61% (0.37%), at 95% confidence level.