Search for Rare Higgs Boson Decays

The search for rare decays of the Higgs boson is a promising way to explore physics beyond the standard model (BSM) indirectly. Such BSM physics might modify Yukawa couplings to quarks or contribute via loop diagrams, potentially leading to higher decay rates than those predicted by the standard model. Since the discovery of the Higgs boson by the CMS and ATLAS collaborations in 2012, much has been learned about this new particle. To date, measurements of Higgs boson decays to heavy particles align with standard model expectations. Decays into a Z-boson and a light meson probe the Higgs interaction with light quarks: a ρ(770) meson is composed of u- and d-quarks, the Φ(1020) meson of s-quarks, and K*(892) of a mix of all these quark flavors. I present the exploration of these searches with the CMS detector at the Large Hadron Collider.