Higgs production in association with a $W$ boson and two energetic tag jets at the LHC is studied for $M_H = 120$ \GeV, with the Higgs decaying to $b\bar{b}$ and the $W$ to $\ellν$ ($\ell = e, μ$), guaranteeing high trigger efficiency. All parton level backgrounds are analyzed, including the effect of fake $b$--tagging. We discuss two detection strategies: in the first, more traditional, one, two jets are required to be $b$--tagged while in the second, which has not been previously examined in detail, only one tag is required. After all selection cuts about 80 and 200 events are foreseen in the two cases for a standard luminosity of 100 $fb^{-1}$ with a S/B ratio of 1/25 and 1/60 respectively. The corresponding statistical significancies, S/$\sqrt{\mathrm B}$ are 1.81 and 1.82.
Searches for invisible Higgs decays in weak boson fusion are a well-known laboratory for jets and QCD studies. We present a series of results on tagging jets and central jet activity. First, precision analyses of the central jet activity require full control of single top production in some analyses. Second, the rate dependence on the size of the tagging jets is not limited to weak boson fusion. For the first time, we show how subjet information on the tagging jets and on the additional jet activity can be used to extract the Higgs signal. The additional observables relieve some of the pressur…
We present some physics topics that can be studied at the LHC using proton tagging. We distinguish the QCD (Pomeron structure, BFKL analysis...) from the exploratory physics topics (HIggs boson, anomalous couplings between photons and $W/Z$ bosons
Based on the knowledge of the QCD radiation pattern, observables to distinguish jets containing one and two $b$-hadrons are discussed. A simple method is used to combine pairs of the most sensitive observables, girth, number of charged tracks and the energy or momentum fraction of the leading $b$-hadron with respect to the jet, into one discriminator. Their efficiencies, on particle level, are estimated and found to improve the performance and the robustness of the observables in different momentum slices.
The production of a W boson and two jets, at least one of which contains a b quark, is a principal background to single-top production, Higgs production, and signals of new physics at hadron colliders. We present a next-to-leading-order (NLO) calculation of the cross section at the Fermilab Tevatron and the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The NLO cross section differs substantially from that at LO, and we provide a context in which to understand this result.
We demonstrate that the detection of the SM and MSSM Higgs bosons will be possible at the LHC via $t\anti t b\anti b$ and $b\anti b b\anti b$ final state, provided $b$-tagging can be performed with good efficiency and purity.
We present some physics topics that can be studied at the LHC using proton tagging. We distinguish the QCD (Pomeron structure, BFKL analysis...) from the exploratory physics topics (HIggs boson, anomalous couplings between photons and $W/Z$ bosons)
We present a next-to-leading-order calculation of the production of a Z boson with two jets, one or more of which contains a heavy quark (Q=c,b). We show that the cross section with only one heavy-quark jet is larger than that with two heavy-quark jets at both the Fermilab Tevatron and the CERN LHC. These processes are the dominant irreducible backgrounds to a Higgs boson produced in association with a Z boson, followed by h->bb. Our calculation makes use of a heavy-quark distribution function, which resums collinear logarithms and makes the next-to-leading-order calculation tractable.
We show that exclusive double-diffractive Higgs production, pp -> p+H+p, followed by the H -> bbbar decay, could play an important role in identifying a `light' Higgs boson at the LHC, provided that the forward outgoing protons are tagged. We predict the cross sections for the signal and for all possible bbbar backgrounds.
We carry out the first detailed calculations of jet production associated with $W$ gauge bosons in Pb+Pb collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In our calculations, the production of $W$+jet in p+p collisions as a reference is obtained by Sherpa, which performs next-to-leading-order matrix element calculations matched to the resummation of parton shower simulations, while jet propagation and medium response in the quark-gluon plasma are simulated with the Linear Boltzmann Transport (LBT) model. We provide numerical predictions on seven observables of $W$+jet production with jet quenchi…
We show that forward proton tagging may significantly enlarge the potential of studying the Higgs sector at the LHC. We concentrate on Higgs production via central exclusive diffractive processes (CEDP). Particular attention is paid to regions in the MSSM parameter space where the partial width of the Higgs boson decay into two gluons much exceeds the SM case; here the CEDP are found to have special advantages.
The heavy ion program at the LHC will present unprecedented opportunities to probe hot QCD matter, that is, the quark gluon plasma (QGP). Among these exciting new probes are high energy partons associated with the production of a Z^0 boson, or Z^0 tagged jets. Once produced, Z^0 bosons are essentially unaffected by the strongly interacting medium produced in heavy-ion collisions, and therefore provide a powerful signal of the initial partonic energy and subsequent medium induced partonic energy loss. When compared with theory, experimental measurements of Z^0 tagged jets will help quantify the…
We perform a BFKL-NLL analysis of forward jet production at HERA which leads to a good description of data over the full kinematical domain. We also predict the azimuthal angle dependence of Mueller-Navelet jet production at the Tevatron and the LHC using the BFKL NLL formalism.
Recently, new observables in LHC inclusive events with three tagged jets were proposed. Here, we extend that proposal to events with four tagged jets. The events are characterised by one jet in the forward direction, one in the backward direction with a large rapidity distance $Y$ from the first one and two more jets tagged in more central regions of the detector. In our setup, non-tagged associated mini-jet multiplicity is present and needs to be accounted for by the inclusion of BFKL gluon Green functions. The projection of the cross section on azimuthal-angle components opens up the opportu…
The signature produced by the Standard Model Higgs boson in the Vector Boson Fusion (VBF) mechanism is usually pinpointed by requiring two well separated hadronic jets, one of which (at least) of them tends to be in the forward direction. With the increase of instantaneous luminosity at the LHC, the isolation of the Higgs boson produced with the VBF mechanism is rendered more challenging. In this paper the feasibility of single jet tagging is explored in a high-luminosity scenario. It is demonstrated that the separation in rapidity between the tagging jet and the Higgs boson can be effectively…
We present a method for improving the phenomenological description of Mueller-Navelet jets at LHC, which is based on matching the BFKL resummation with fixed order calculations. We point out the need of a consistent identification of jets between experimental measurements and theoretical descriptions. We hope as well to motivate an extensive analysis of MN jets at LHC in run 2.
The signature at the LHC of many Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) scenarios is events with large missing energy. If the forward outgoing protons are measured, we show that the production and decay of BSM particles in the central rapidity interval, with gaps in rapidity either side, offers certain advantages over inclusive production, to search for signals (a) with missing longitudinal 4-momentum (typical of invisible Higgs production), and (b) for new light pseudoscalar bosons.
We present a new technique for tagging heavy-flavor jets with p_T > 500 GeV called "mu_x tagging." Current track-based methods of b-jet tagging lose efficiency and experience a large rise in fake rate in the boosted regime. Using muons from B hadron decay, we combine angular information and jet substructure to tag b jets, c jets, light jets, and "light-heavy" jets (those containing B hadrons from gluon splitting). We find tagging efficiencies of epsilon_b = 14%, epsilon_c = 6.5%, epsilon_{light-light} = 0.14%, and epsilon_{light-heavy} = 0.5%, respectively, that are nearly independent of trans…
The addition of forward proton detectors to LHC experiments will significantly enlarge the potential for studying New Physics. A topical example is Higgs production by the central exclusive diffractive process, pp -> p+H+p. We discuss the exclusive production of Higgs bosons in both the SM and MSSM. Special attention is paid to the backgrounds to the H -> bbbar signal.
We present a flexible Monte Carlo implementation of the perturbative framework of High Energy Jets, describing multi-jet events at hadron colliders. The description includes a resummation which ensures leading logarithmic accuracy for large invariant mass between jets, and is matched to tree-level accuracy for multiplicities up to 4 jets. The resummation includes all-order hard corrections, which become important for increasing centre-of-mass energy of the hadronic collision. We discuss observables relevant for confronting the perturbative framework with 7 TeV data from the LHC, and the impact…
Electroweak boson-tagged jet measurements provide a promising experimental channel to accurately study the physics of jet production and propagation in dense QCD medium. In this talk, we present theoretical predictions for the nuclear-induced attenuation of the differential cross section for isolated photon-tagged and $\rm Z^0$-tagged jet production in heavy ion collisions, and provide theoretical interpretations to the recent LHC data. We demonstrate quantitatively the significance of collisional and radiative energy losses, as revealed in the strong momentum asymmetry $dσ/dx_{VJ}$ and nuclea…
We emphasize the importance of tagging the outgoing forward protons to sharpen the predictions for New Physics at the LHC (such as the diffractive production of a light Higgs boson). The rescattering effects lead to a rich distinctive structure of the cross section as a function of the transverse momenta of the protons. We show that a study of the correlations between the proton transverse momenta for double-diffractive production of central dijets will provide a detailed check of the whole diffractive formalism. Adopting a perturbative two-gluon structure of the Pomeron, we emphasize that 2++…
We investigate the charged Higgs boson signal at the LHC using its dominant production and decay modes with triple b-tagging, i.e. $tH^- \to t\bar tb \to b\bar bb W^+ W^-$, followed by leptonic decay of one W and hadronic decay of the other. We consider the continuum background from the associated production of $t\bar t$ with a b- or a light quark or gluon jet, which can be mis-tagged as b-jet. We reconstruct the top quark masses to identify the 3rd b-jet accompanying the $t\bar t$ pair, and use its p_T distribution to distinguish the signal from the background. Combining this with the reconst…
Events with a leptonic W-decay plus jets should contain top-quark signals, but a QCD W+jets background must be separated. We compare transverse W-momentum, jet multiplicity, and b-tagging separation criteria, and find that the main background after tagging comes from mistagging. We illustrate how to extract the mass m_t via event reconstructions and how to confirm signal purity by lepton angular distributions.
We revisit the exclusive signature $e^\pm (μ^\pm) + b\bar b$ in the associated production of the intermediate mass Higgs boson with a $W$ boson. We show that it is feasible to use this signature to identify the Higgs boson in the lower intermediate mass region ($90$ to $130$ GeV) at the LHC with reasonable acceptance cuts by assuming effective bottom-jet identification. We further demonstrate that the background can be reduced with judicious cuts down to the level of the signal.
I review some issues related to short distance QCD and its relation to the experimental program of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) now under construction in Geneva.
We present a detailed study of the central exclusive production of the Standard Model Higgs Boson in the WW decay channel at the LHC. We include estimates of the experimental acceptance, including that of the proposed proton tagging detectors at 220m and 420m around either ATLAS and / or CMS, and the level 1 trigger acceptances. We give first estimates of the photon-photon and glue-glue background processes in the semi-leptonic and fully-leptonic decay channels. We find that there will be a detectable signal for Higgs masses between 140 GeV and 200 GeV, and that the backgrounds should be contr…
At the LHC associated top quark and Higgs boson production with a Higgs decay to bottom quarks has long been a heavily disputed search channel. Recently, it has been found to not be viable. We show how it can be observed by tagging massive Higgs and top jets. For this purpose we construct boosted top and Higgs taggers for Standard Model processes in a complex QCD environment.
Two theoretical descriptions of exclusive diffractive jets and Higgs production at the LHC were implemented into the FPMC generator: the Khoze, Martin, Ryskin model and the Cudell, Hernández, Ivanov, Dechambre exclusive model. We then study the uncertainties. We compare their predictions to the CDF measurement and discuss the possibility of constraining the exclusive Higgs production at the LHC with early measurements of exclusive jets. We show that the present theoretical uncertainties can be reduced with such data by a factor of 5.
The sensitivities to the anomalous quartic gauge boson coupling $γγγZ$ are estimated via $γZ$ production with intact protons in the forward region at the LHC. Proton tagging proves to be a powerful tool to suppress the background, which allows consideration of the hadronic decays of the $Z$ boson in addition to the leptonic ones. We discuss the discovery potential for an integrated luminosity of $300\,\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$ and $3000\,\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$. The sensitivity we obtain at $300\,\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$ goes beyond the one expected from LHC bounds on the $Z\rightarrow γγγ$ decay by about three or…
We present theoretical predictions for the nuclear-induced attenuation of the differential cross sections for inclusive and tagged b-jet production in heavy ion collisions at the LHC. We find that for inclusive b-jet production at high transverse momentum the mass effects are negligible, and that the attenuation is comparable to the one observed for light jets. On the other hand, for isolated-photon and B-meson-tagged b-jets the sample of events with heavy quarks produced at the early stages of the collision is greatly enhanced. Thus, these tagged b-jet final-states have a much more direct con…
Motivated by a hint in a CMS search for right-handed $W$-bosons in $eejj$ final states, we propose an experimental test of quark-mixing matrices in a general left-right symmetric model, based on counting the numbers of $b$-tags from right-handed $W$-boson hadronic decays. We find that, with our test, differences between left- and right-handed quark-mixing matrices could be detected at the LHC with $\sqrt{s}=14$ TeV. With an integrated luminosity of about $20/\textrm{fb}$, our test is sensitive to right-handed quark-mixing angles as small as about $30^\circ$ and with $3000/\textrm{fb}$, our tes…
In these proceedings, we report on recent results related to vector boson-tagged jet production in heavy ion collisions and the related modification of jet substructure, such as jet shapes and jet momentum sharing distributions. $Z^0$-tagging and $γ$-tagging of jets provides new opportunities to study parton shower formation and propagation in the quark-gluon plasma and has been argued to provide tight constrains on the energy loss of reconstructed jets. We present theoretical predictions for isolated photon-tagged and electroweak boson-tagged jet production in Pb+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN…
We study the production of a W boson in association with n hard QCD jets (for n>=2), with a particular emphasis on results relevant for the Large Hadron Collider (7 TeV and 8 TeV). We present predictions for this process from High Energy Jets, a framework for all-order resummation of the dominant contributions from wide-angle QCD emissions. We first compare predictions against recent ATLAS data and then shift focus to observables and regions of phase space where effects beyond NLO are expected to be large.
The existence of an axion-like particle (ALP) would induce anomalous scattering of light by light. This process can be probed at the Large Hadron Collider in central exclusive production of photon pairs in proton-proton collisions by tagging the surviving protons using forward proton detectors. Using a detailed simulation, we estimate the expected bounds on the ALP--photon coupling for a wide range of masses. We show that the proposed search is competitive and complementary to other collider bounds for masses above 600 GeV, especially for resonant ALP production between 600 GeV and 2 TeV. Our …
We study the medium modification of jets correlated with large transverse momentum photons at the LHC via a transport and perturbative QCD hybrid model which incorporates the contributions from both elastic collisions and radiative energy loss experienced by the parton showers. Calculations are performed for the modification of the photon-tagged jet yield, the photon-jet energy imbalance, and the azimuthal distribution of away-side jets. The modifications of photon-tagged jets with different $x_T = p_{T, J}/p_{T, γ}$ values are studied and they exhibit different centrality and jet cone size de…
In this talk, I outline theoretical predictions for weak boson pair production in association with two jets at the LHC. I will discuss the next-to-leading order QCD corrections to the processes $pp\to W^+W^+jj$ and $pp\to W^+W^-jj$, and the interfacing of $pp\to W^+W^+jj$ with a parton shower using the {\tt POWHEG BOX} framework.
The contribution of gg->H+jets production process to the vector boson fusion production of the Higgs boson, VV->H, at LHC was evaluated with the ALPGEN generator and the PYTHIA shower Monte Carlo including a jet-parton matching procedure. After the experimental like event selections applied at PYTHIA particle level, the contribution was found to be 4-5 % for a Higgs boson mass of 120 GeV.
Considering the large value of the top Yukawa coupling, we investigate the leading one-loop Yukawa electroweak corrections that can be induced by the top quark in a process such as Higgs production in association with a tagged bottom anti-bottom pair at the LHC. At NLO these contributions are found to be small at the LHC both for the total cross section and for the distributions. In the limit of vanishing bottom Yukawa coupling where the LO contribution vanishes, the process can still be induced at one-loop through the top quark transition. Though this contribution which can be counted as part…
The charge asymmetry in W + jets production at the LHC can serve to calibrate the presence of New Physics contributions. We study the ratio σ(W^+ + n jets)/σ(W^- + n jets) in the Standard Model for n <= 4, paying particular attention to the uncertainty in the prediction from higher-order perturbative corrections and uncertainties in parton distribution functions. We show that these uncertainties are generally of order a few percent, making the experimental measurement of the charge asymmetry ratio a particularly useful diagnostic tool for New Physics contributions.
We evaluate differential cross sections for production of four jets in multi-Regge kinematics at a hadron collider. The main focus lies on azimuthal angle dependences. As in previous studies, the ratios of correlation functions of products of cosines of azimuthal angle differences among the tagged jets offer us the cleanest quantities to compare with experimental data. The calculations are based on the jet production from a single BFKL ladder with a convolution of three BFKL Green functions where we always have two forward/backward jets tagged in the final state. We also demand the tagging of …
We test several BFKL-like evolution equations for unintegrated gluon distributions against forward-central dijet production at LHC. Our study is based on fitting the evolution scenarios to the LHC data using the high energy factorization approach. Thus, as a by-product, we obtain a set of LHC-motivated unintegrated gluon distributions ready to use. We utilize this application by calculating azimuthal decorrelations for forward-central dijet production and compare with existing data.
At the LHC, using forward + central detectors, it becomes possible for the first time to carry out measurements of the transverse energy flow due to ``minijets" accompanying production of two jets separated by a large rapidity interval. We discuss parton-shower calculations of energy flow observables in a high-energy factorized Monte Carlo framework, and comment on the role of these observables to study high parton multiplicity effects.
We examine the contribution of Multiple Parton Interactions to Z+n-jets production at the LHC, n=2,3,4, where the Z boson is assumed to decay leptonically. We compare the results obtained with the correlated GS09 double parton distribution function with those obtained with two instances of fully factorized single parton distribution functions: MSTW2008LO and CTEQ6LO. It appears quite feasible to measure the MPI contribution to Z+2/3/4 jets already in the first phase of the LHC with a total luminosity of one inverse femtobarn at 7 TeV. If as expected the trigger threshold for single photons is …
We study the production of Mueller-Navelet jets at 13 TeV LHC, within collinear factorization and including the BFKL resummation of energy logarithms in the next-to-leading approximation. We calculate several azimuthal correlations for different values of the rapidity separation $Y$ between the two jets and evaluate the effect of excluding those events where, for a given $Y$, one of the two jets is produced in the central region.
In this talk we present the first calculation of next-to-leading-order QCD corrections for the production of $W^+W^-$ pairs in association with three jets at the LHC. We show the observed improvement in the dependence of total and differential cross sections on the unphysical renormalization and factorization scales. We study the radiation pattern for configurations associated to vector-boson fusion and the impact that the QCD corrections have on them.
Jets with a large radius $R\gtrsim 1$ and grooming algorithms are widely used to fully capture the decay products of boosted heavy particles at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Unlike most discriminating variables used in such studies, the jet radius is usually not optimized for specific physics scenarios. This is because every jet configuration must be calibrated, insitu, to account for detector response and other experimental effects. One solution to enhance the availability of large-$R$ jet configurations used by the LHC experiments is {\it jet re-clustering}. Jet re-clustering introduces a…
We study a possibility of observation of the first Kaluza-Klein (KK) excitation of gluon in a warped extra dimension model at the LHC. In our analysis, we adopt the KK gluon mass and the b-quark coupling to the KK gluon as model parameters and study the sensitivity of the ATLAS experiment to observe the KK gluon through the two $b$-jets channel.
The feasibility studies of the measurement of the central exclusive jet production at the LHC using the proton tagging technique are presented. In order to reach the low jet-mass region, single tagged events were considered. The studies were performed at the c.m. energy of 14 TeV and the ATLAS detector, but are also applicable for the CMS-TOTEM experiments. Four data-taking scenarios were considered: AFP and ALFA detectors as forward proton taggers and $β^*$ = 0.55 m and $β^*$ = 90 m optics. After the event selection, the signal-to-background ratio ranges between 5 and $10^4$. Finally, the exp…
We address aspects of jet physics at the Large Hadron Collider focusing on features of recent jet measurements which challenge the theory. We discuss examples illustrating the role of QCD parton showers, nonperturbative corrections, soft multi-gluon emission.
We investigate the signature of a heavy charged Higgs boson of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model in the lepton plus multi-jet channel at the Large Hadron Collider with four $b$-tags. The signal is the gluon-gluon fusion process $gg\to t\bar b H^-$, followed by the $H^-\to \bar t b$ decay, while the main background is from $gg\to t\bar t b\bar b$. We find that the two can be separated effectively by kinematic cuts and mass reconstruction, but the signal size is not very large in the end. Nonetheless, with a good $b$-tagging efficiency, $ε_b\sim50%$, this channel can provide a viable sig…
We discuss jet production at forward rapidities at the LHC. In this region QCD logarithmic corrections in the hard transverse momentum and in the large rapidity interval may both be quantitatively significant. We describe results of using high-energy factorization techniques, which allow one to take into account both kinds of corrections to higher orders in QCD.
Many searches for physics beyond the Standard Model at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) rely on top tagging algorithms, which discriminate between boosted hadronic top quarks and the much more common jets initiated by light quarks and gluons. We note that the hadronic calorimeter (HCAL) effectively takes a "digital image" of each jet, with pixel intensities given by energy deposits in individual HCAL cells. Viewed in this way, top tagging becomes a canonical pattern recognition problem. With this motivation, we present a novel top tagging algorithm based on an Artificial Neural Network (ANN), o…
We present results and predictions at next-to-leading order for the recent LHC lead-lead run at a center-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV per nucleon-nucleon pair. Specifically, we focus on the suppression the single and double inclusive jet cross sections and demonstrate how the di-jet asymmetry, recently measured by ATLAS and CMS, can be extracted from this general result. The case of jets tagged by an electroweak boson is exemplified by the $Z^0$+jet channel. We predict a signature transition from enhancement to suppression of the tagged jet related to the medium-induced modification of the parto…
We consider the process $p p \to t {\bar t} H$. This process can give rise to many signatures of the Higgs boson. The signatures can have electrons, muons and jets. We consider the signatures that have two electrons/muons and jets. Tagging of a tau jet and a bottom jet can help reduce the backgrounds significantly. In particular, we examine the usefulness of the signatures "isolated 2 electrons/muons + a bottom jet + a tau jet", "isolated 2 electrons/muons + 2 tau jets", "isolated 2 electrons/muons + 2 bottom jets + a tau jet", and "isolated 2 electrons/muons + a bottom jet + 2 tau jets". We f…
The feasibility studies of the central exclusive jet production at the LHC using the proton tagging technique are presented. Three classes of data taking scenarios are considered: double tag at high pile-up, single tag at low pile-up and double tag at low pile-up. Analyses were performed at the c.m. energy of 14 TeV for the ATLAS experiment, but are also valid for the CMS/TOTEM detectors.
The large center-of-mass energies available to the heavy-ion program at the LHC and recent experimental advances at RHIC will enable QCD matter at very high temperatures and energy densities, that is, the quark-gluon plasma (QGP), to be probed in unprecedented ways. Fully-reconstructed inclusive jets and the away-side hadron showers associated with electroweak bosons, that is, tagged jets, are among these exciting new probes. Full jet reconstruction provides an experimental window into the mechanisms of quark and gluon dynamics in the QGP which is not accessible via leading particles and leadi…
Vector boson-tagged jet production in collisions of heavy nuclei opens new opportunities to study parton shower formation and propagation in strongly interacting matter. It has been argued to provide a golden channel that can constrain the energy loss of jets in the quark-gluon plasma created in heavy ion reactions. We present theoretical results for isolated photon-tagged and $Z^0$ boson-tagged jet production in Pb+Pb collisions with $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 5.02$ TeV at the LHC. Specifically, we evaluate the transverse momentum imbalance ${\rm x_{JV}}$ distribution and nuclear modification factor ${…
Tagged jet measurements in high energy hadronic and nuclear reactions provide constraints on the energy and parton flavor origin of the parton shower that recoils against the tagging particle. Such additional insight can be especially beneficial in illuminating the mechanisms of heavy flavor production in proton-proton collisions at the LHC and their modification in the heavy ion environment, which are not fully understood. With this motivation, we present theoretical results for isolated-photon-tagged and B-meson-tagged b-jet production at center-of-mass energy 5.1 TeV for comparison to the u…
