Production and Hadronic Decays of Higgs Bosons in Heavy-Ion Collisions

We examine Higgs boson production and decay in heavy-ion collisions at the LHC and future colliders. Owing to the long lifetime of the Higgs boson, its hadronic decays may experience little or no screening from the hot and dense quark-gluon plasma, whereas jets from hard scattering processes and from decays of the electroweak gauge bosons and the top quark suffer significant energy loss. This distinction can lead to enhanced signal to background ratios in hadronic decay channels and thus, for example, provide alternative ways to probe the Yukawa coupling of the Higgs boson to the bottom quark and its lifetime.