Limits on the Higgs boson lifetime and width from its decay to four charged leptons

Constraints on the lifetime and width of the Higgs boson are obtained from H → ZZ → 4l events using data recorded by the CMS experiment during the LHC run 1 with an integrated luminosity of 5.1 and 19.7 fb⁻¹ at a center-of-mass energy of 7 and 8 TeV, respectively. The measurement of the Higgs boson lifetime is derived from its flight distance in the CMS detector with an upper bound of τ_H < 1.9 × 10⁻¹³ s at the 95% confidence level (C.L.), corresponding to a lower bound on the width of Γ_H > 3.5 × 10⁻⁹ MeV. The measurement of the width is obtained from an off-shell production technique, generalized to include anomalous couplings of the Higgs boson to two electroweak bosons. From this measurement, a joint constraint is set on the Higgs boson width and a parameter f_ΛQ that expresses an anomalous coupling contribution as an on-shell cross-section fraction. The limit on the Higgs boson width is Γ_H < 46 MeV with f_ΛQ unconstrained and Γ_H < 26 MeV for f_ΛQ = 0 at the 95% C.L. The constraint f_ΛQ < 3.8 × 10⁻³ at the 95% C.L. is obtained for the expected standard model Higgs boson width.