AbstractAnomalies in multi-lepton final states at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have been reported in Refs. (von Buddenbrock et al., J Phys G 45(11):115003, arXiv:1711.07874 [hep-ph], 2018; Buddenbrock et al., JHEP 1910:157, arXiv:1901.05300 [hep-ph], 2019). These can be interpreted in terms of the production of a heavy boson, H, decaying into a standard model (SM) Higgs boson, h, and a singlet scalar, S, which is treated as a SM Higgs-like boson. This process would naturally affect the measurement of the Wh signal strength at the LHC, where h is produced in association with leptons and di-jets. Here, h would be produced with lower transverse momentum, $$p_{Th}$$
p
Th
, compared to SM processes. Corners of the phase-space are fixed according to the model parameters derived in Refs. (von Buddenbrock et al., J Phys G 45(11):115003, arXiv:1711.07874 [hep-ph], 2018; von Buddenbrock et al., Eur Phys J C 76(10):580, arXiv:1606.01674 [hep-ph], 2016) without additional tuning, thus nullifying potential look-else-where effects or selection biases. Provided that no stringent requirements are made on $$p_{Th}$$
p
Th
or related observables, the signal strength of Wh is $$\mu (Wh)=2.41 \pm 0.37$$
μ
(
W
h
)
=
2.41
±
0.37
. This corresponds to a deviation from the SM of $$3.8\sigma $$
3.8
σ
. This result further strengthens the need to measure with precision the SM Higgs boson couplings in $$e^+e^-$$
e
+
e
-
, and $$e^-p$$
e
-
p
collisions, in addition to pp collisions.
Monte Carlo phase space with limited transverse momentum
