Production of heavy Higgs bosons and decay into top quarks at the LHC. II. Top-quark polarization and spin correlation effects

We analyze, within several parameter scenarios of type-II two-Higgs doublet extensions of the standard model, the impact of heavy neutral Higgs-boson resonances on top-quark pair production and their subsequent decay to dileptonic final states at the LHC (13 TeV). In particular, we investigate the effects of heavy Higgs bosons on top-spin observables, that is, the longitudinal top-quark polarization and top-quark spin correlations. We take into account NLO QCD as well as weak interaction corrections and show that top-spin observables, if evaluated in judiciously chosen top-quark pair invariant mass bins, can significantly enhance the sensitivity to heavy Higgs resonances in top-quark pair events.