Search for non-resonant Higgs boson pair production in the bb ℓνℓν final state with the ATLAS detector in pp collisions at √s = 13 TeV

A search for non-resonant Higgs boson pair production, as predicted by the Standard Model, is presented, where one of the Higgs bosons decays via the H → bb channel and the other via one of the H → WW^⁎/ZZ^⁎/ττ channels. The analysis selection requires events to have at least two b-tagged jets and exactly two leptons (electrons or muons) with opposite electric charge in the final state. Candidate events consistent with Higgs boson pair production are selected using a multi-class neural network discriminant. The analysis uses 139 fb⁻¹ of pp collision data recorded at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. An observed (expected) upper limit of 1.2 (0.9^+0.4_-0.3) pb is set on the non-resonant Higgs boson pair production cross-section at 95% confidence level, which is equivalent to 40 (29+¹⁴_-9) times the value predicted in the Standard Model.