[Seminars] Particle Physics Seminar - Today!

[Holly Jaffey]

PARTICLE PHYSICS SEMINAR TODAY

Monday October 2, 2017
PRC 201
4:15pm

Speaker: Caterina Vernieri (Fermilab)

Title:  Search for gluon-fusion production of Higgs bosons decaying into a bottom quark-antiquark pair

Abstract: Searches for the Higgs boson produced via gluon fusion and subsequently decaying to a bottom quark-antiquark pair (Hbb) was long considered impossible due to the overwhelming background from multijet production of bottom quarks. In this seminar I present an innovative search for the Hbb process in events where the Higgs boson is produced at large transverse momentum. The decay products are collimated and reconstructed as a single, large-radius jet. The resulting experimental signature is a peak over a falling background in the distribution of the invariant mass of the jet. Jet substructure and dedicated b-tagging techniques are used to discriminate signal from background.  The data-driven background estimation strategy and signal extraction is validated with Z to bb decays. The analysis leads to the first observation of the Z to bb process  in the single-jet topology at the LHC. An excess of events compatible with Hbb hypothesis is found with respect to the background with  a local significance of 1.5 standard deviations.  These results set the foundations for a broader Higgs and beyond the standard model program at the LHC.
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