We present a new tool for precision measurements of the Higgs boson production mechanisms at the LHC. We study events with a Higgs boson produced with two forward jets. Even with fairly stringent cuts, one expects a significant contamination of gluon fusion (GF) in addition to vector-boson fusion (VBF) in the event sample. By measuring the jet energy profile of the most central jet, we find that SM production can be distinguished from either pure VBF or pure GF at the $5σ$ level with 100 fb$^{-1}$ of luminosity at the 14 TeV LHC. Moreover, this discrimination technique can be used to validate or rule out new physics models that predict similar observable branching fractions as the 125 GeV SM Higgs but have different production mechanisms.
We demonstrate that the process $e^+e^-\to t\anti t h$ at the NLC provides a powerful tool for extracting the $t\anti t$ (Yukawa) couplings of the $\h$. In combination with the $\epem\to Z\h$ process, an accurate determination of the $ZZ$ coupling of the $\h$ is also possible. The resulting ability to distinguish different models of the Higgs sector is illustrated by detailed studies for two-Higgs-doublet models.
In this work, we propose a new class of jet substructure observables which, unlike fragmentation functions, are largely insensitive to the poorly known physics of hadronization. We show that sub-jet structures provide us with a large discriminating power between different jet quenching Monte Carlo implementations.
Discriminating QCD Compton and Quark-Antiquark Annihilation Processes in $γ$ + Jets Using Interpretable Machine Learning
Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Berhampur（印度科学教育研究所（IISER），贝尔汉普尔）；Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Tirupati（印度科学教育研究所（IISER），蒂鲁帕蒂）
It is still an open question whether the new scalar particle discovered at the LHC with a mass of 125 GeV is the SM Higgs boson or it belongs to models of new physics with an extended Higgs sector, as the MSSM or 2HDM. The ratio of branching fractions $R$ = BR($H \to b \bar b$)/BR($H \to τ^+ τ^-$) of Higgs boson decays is a powerful tool in order to distinguish the MSSM Higgs sector from the SM or non-supersymmetric 2HDM. This ratio receives large renormalization-scheme independent radiative corrections in supersymmetric models at large $\tanβ$, which are insensitive to the SUSY mass scale and…
We present a case study for the doubly charged Higgs bosons $H^{\pm\pm}$ pair production in $e^+e^-$ and $pp$ colliders with their subsequent decays to four charged leptons. We consider the Higgs Triplet Model (HTM) not restricted by the custodial symmetry and the Minimal Left-Right Symmetric Model (MLRSM). The models include scalar triplets with different complexity of scalar potentials and, due to experimental restrictions, completely different scales of non-standard triplet vacuum expectation values. In both models, a doubly charged Higgs boson $H^{\pm\pm}$ can acquire a mass of hundreds of…
The Mueller-Navelet di-jet production process represents an ultimate testfield of pQCD in the high-energy limit. Several experimental analyses carried out so far are in good agreement with theoretical predictions, based on collinear factorization and BFKL resummation of energy logarithms in the next-to-leading approximation, with the CMS experimental data at center-of-mass energy equal to 7 TeV. However, the question if the same data can be described also by fixed-order perturbative approaches has not yet been fully answered. We discuss how the use of partially asymmetric cuts in the transvers…
We reconsider the associated $Z$ boson and charm or beauty jet production at the LHC with paying special attention to the formation dynamics of heavy jets. Two different approaches are studied: first one, where heavy quarks are produced in the hard scattering subprocesses, implemented in the Monte-Carlo generator PEGASUS, and another scenario, where the hard scattering is calculated at NLO with MadGraph5_aMC@NLO and TMD parton shower is included (implemented in the Monte-Carlo generator CASCADE3). We compare the predictions obtained in both schemes with latest experimental data for associated …
We introduce a new jet shape -- N-subjettiness -- designed to identify boosted hadronically-decaying objects like electroweak bosons and top quarks. Combined with a jet invariant mass cut, N-subjettiness is an effective discriminating variable for tagging boosted objects and rejecting the background of QCD jets with large invariant mass. In efficiency studies of boosted W bosons and top quarks, we find tagging efficiencies of 30% are achievable with fake rates of 1%. We also consider the discovery potential for new heavy resonances that decay to pairs of boosted objects, and find significant i…
Based on the jet image approach, which treats the energy deposition in each calorimeter cell as the pixel intensity, the Convolutional neural network (CNN) method has been found to achieve a sizable improvement in jet tagging compared to the traditional jet substructure analysis. In this work, the Mask R-CNN framework is adopted to reconstruct Higgs jets in collider-like events, with the effects of pileup contamination taken into account. This automatic jet reconstruction method achieves higher efficiency of Higgs jet detection and higher accuracy of Higgs boson four-momentum reconstruction th…
Jet counting and jet vetos are crucial analysis tools for many LHC searches. We can understand their properties from the distribution of the exclusive number of jets. LHC processes tend to show either a distinct staircase scaling or a Poisson scaling, depending on kinematic cuts. We illustrate our approach in a detailed study of jets in weak boson fusion Higgs production.
We compute the cross section and differential distributions for the production of a Standard Model Higgs boson in association with a hadronic jet to next-to-next-to-leading order in quantum chromodynamics (QCD). In Higgs boson studies at the LHC, final states containing one jet are a dominant contribution to the total event rate, and their understanding is crucial for improved determinations of the Higgs boson properties. We observe substantial higher order corrections to transverse momentum spectra and rapidity distributions in Higgs-plus-one-jet final states. Their inclusion stabilises the r…
Experimental analyses often use jet binning to distinguish between different kinematic regimes and separate contributions from background processes. To accurately model theoretical uncertainties in these measurements, a consistent description of the jet bins is required. We present a complete framework for the combination of resummed results for production processes in different exclusive jet bins, focusing on Higgs production in gluon fusion as an example. We extend the resummation of the Higgs + 1-jet cross section into the challenging low transverse momentum region, lowering the uncertainti…
We present a perturbative QCD factorization formula for substructures of an energetic Higgs jet, taking the energy profile resulting from the $H\to b\bar b$ decay as an example. The formula is written as a convolution of a hard Higgs decay kernel with two $b$-quark jet functions and a soft function that links the colors of the two $b$ quarks. We derive an analytical expression to approximate the energy profile within a boosted Higgs jet, which significantly differs from those of ordinary QCD jets. This formalism also extends to boosted $W$ and $Z$ bosons in their hadronic decay modes, allowing…
The mass of the Standard Model (SM) Higgs boson was constrained by the Large Electron-Positron (LEP) collider to be above 114.4 GeV. Simple extensions of the scalar sector like adding singlets and/or doublets allow the lightest Higgs to be much lighter via a reduction in its coupling to gauge bosons. Such a light Higgs could have evaded the LEP searches but could be detected at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in the process pp -> h j -> tau^+ tau^- j, where j is a resolved jet. We conclude that in some Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) extensions of the scalar sector, a very light Higgs state co…
The scalar potential of the N-Higgs-doublet model (NHDM) is best analyzed not in the space of N complex doublets $ϕ_a$ but in the $N^2$-dimensional space of real-valued bilinears constructed of $ϕ_a^\dagger ϕ_b$. In particular, many insights have been gained into CP violation in the 2HDM and 3HDM by studying how generalized CP transformations (GCPs) act in this bilinear space. These insights relied on the fact that GCPs, which involved an odd number of mirror reflection, could be clearly distinguished from Higgs family transformations by the sign of the determinant of the transformation matrix…
In the Standard Model the Higgs coupling to gluons is almost entirely induced by top quark loops. We derive the logarithmic structure of Higgs production in association with two jets. Just like in the one-jet case the transverse momentum distributions exhibit logarithms of the top quark mass and can be used to test the nature of the loop-induced Higgs coupling to gluons. Using Higgs decays to W bosons and to tau leptons we show how the corresponding analyses hugely benefit from the second jet in the relevant signal rate as well as in the background rejection.
The implementation of exclusive diffractive production of Higgs boson and dijets in the FPMC (Forward Physics Monte Carlo) framework is presented following the models by Khoze, Martin, Ryskin and Cudell, Dechambre, Hernandez and Ivanov. The predictions of the models are compared to the CDF measurement of exclusive jets and the uncertainties on the Higgs boson and jet production cross sections at the LHC are discussed.
The LEP centre of mass energy has been increased since 1996 in the aim of producing the Higgs boson. The SM Higgs boson search has been pursued in the four LEP collaborations exploiting final states with higher branching ratios. In the following we discuss the search in final states with two jets and missing energy or charged leptons.
By representing each collider event as a point cloud, we adopt the Graphic Convolutional Network (GCN) with focal loss to reconstruct the Higgs jet in it. This method provides higher Higgs tagging efficiency and better reconstruction accuracy than the traditional methods which use jet substructure information. The GCN, which is trained on events of the $H$+jets process, is capable of detecting a Higgs jet in events of several different processes, even though the performance degrades when there are boosted heavy particles other than the Higgs in the event. We also demonstrate the signal and bac…
We study the Dark Matter (DM) discovery prospect and its spin discrimination in the theoretical framework of gauge invariant and renormalizable Higgs portal DM models at the ILC with $\sqrt{s} = 500$ GeV. In such models, the DM pair is produced in association with a $Z$ boson. In case the singlet scalar DM, the mediator is just the SM Higgs boson, whereas for the fermion or vector DM there is an additional singlet scalar mediator that mixes with the SM Higgs boson, which produces significant observable differences. After careful investigation of the signal and backgrounds both at parton level …
We suggest that the exclusive Higgs + light (or b)-jet production at the LHC, $pp \to h+j(j_b)$, is a rather sensitive probe of the light-quarks Yukawa couplings and of other forms of new physics (NP) in the Higgs-gluon $hgg$ and quark-gluon $qqg$ interactions. We study the Higgs $p_T$-distribution in $pp \to h+j(j_b) \to γγ+ j(j_b)$, i.e., in $h+j(j_b)$ production followed by the Higgs decay $h \to γγ$, employing the ($p_T$-dependent) signal strength formalism to probe various types of NP which are relevant to these processes and which we parameterize either as scaled Standard Model (SM) coup…
Two Higgs doublet extensions of the standard model, such as supersymmetry, predict the existence of charged Higgs bosons. We explore the reach for TeV-scale charged Higgs bosons through their associated production with top quarks, and their decay to boosted top jets and $μ_x$ tagged boosted bottom jets, at a 14 TeV CERN Large Hadron Collider and at a 100 TeV Future Circular Collider. In particular, we show the moderate $\tanβ$ "wedge" region of parameter space cannot be probed at the Large Hadron Collider for TeV-scale $H^\pm$ because the cross section is too small. However, a 100 TeV future p…
The Higgs boson may decay predominantly into a hidden sector, producing lepton jets instead of the standard Higgs signatures. We propose a search strategy for such a signal at hadron colliders. A promising channel is the associated production of the Higgs with a Z or W, where the dominant background is Z or W plus QCD jets. The lepton jets can be discriminated from QCD jets by cutting on the electromagnetic fraction and charge ratio. The former is the fraction of jet energy deposited in the electromagnetic calorimeter and the latter is the ratio of energy carried by charged particles to the el…
We use the recently proposed jettiness-subtraction scheme to provide the complete calculation of Higgs boson production in association with a jet in hadronic collisions through next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbative QCD. This method exploits the observation that the $N$-jettiness event-shape variable completely describes the singularity structure of QCD when final-state colored particles are present. Our results are in agreement with a recent computation of the $gg$ and $qg$ partonic initial states based on sector-improved residue subtraction. We present phenomenological results for bot…
Among various supersymmetric (SUSY) standard models, the gravity mediation model with a neutralino LSP and the gauge mediation model with a very light gravitino are attractive from the cosmological view point. These models have different scales of SUSY breaking and their underlying physics in high energy is quite different. However, if the sparticles' decay into the gravitino is prompt in the latter case, their collider signatures can be similar: multiple jets and missing transverse momentum. In this paper, we study the discrimination between these models in minimal cases at the LHC based on t…
It is widely considered that, for Higgs boson searches at the Large Hadron Collider, WH and ZH production where the Higgs boson decays to b anti-b are poor search channels due to large backgrounds. We show that at high transverse momenta, employing state-of-the-art jet reconstruction and decomposition techniques, these processes can be recovered as promising search channels for the standard model Higgs boson around 120 GeV in mass.
We present an implementation of Higgs boson production via vector-boson fusion in association with three jets at hadron colliders in the POWHEG-BOX, a framework for the matching of NLO-QCD calculations with parton-shower programs. Our work provides the means to precisely describe the properties of extra jet activity in vector-boson fusion reactions that are used for the suppression of QCD backgrounds by central jet veto techniques. For a representative setup at the CERN LHC we verify that uncertainties related to parton-shower effects are mild for distributions related to the third jet, in con…
The CP-violating version of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) is an example of a model where experimental data do not preclude the presence of light Higgs bosons in the range around 10 -- 110 GeV. Such light Higgs bosons, decaying almost wholly to b-bbar pairs, may be copiously produced at the LHC, but would remain inaccessible to conventional Higgs searches because of intractable QCD backgrounds. We demonstrate that a significant number of these light Higgs bosons would be boosted strongly enough for the pair of daughter $b$-jet pairs to appear as a single `fat' jet with substr…
It is well known that understanding the structure of jet radiation can significantly improve Higgs analyses. Using Fox--Wolfram moments we systematically study the geometric patterns of additional jets in weak boson fusion Higgs production with a decay to photons. First, we find a significant improvement with respect to the standard analysis based on an analysis of the tagging jet correlations. In addition, we show that replacing a jet veto by a Fox-Wolfram moment analysis of the extra jet radiation almost doubles the signal-to-background ratio. Finally, we show that this improvement can also …
We investigate possible scenarios of light-squark production at the LHC as a new mechanism to produce Higgs bosons in association with jets. The study is motivated by the SUSY search for H+jets events, performed by the CMS collaboration on 8 and 13 TeV data using the razor variables. Two simplified models are proposed to interpret the observations in this search. The constraint from Run I and the implications for Run II and beyond are discussed.
The LHC searches for the CP-odd Higgs boson is studied (with masses from 300 GeV to 1 TeV) in the context of the general two-Higgs-doublet model. With the discovery of the 125 GeV Higgs boson at the LHC, we highlight one promising discovery channel of the hZ. This channel can become significant after the global signal fitting to the 125 GeV Higgs boson in the general two-Higgs-doublet model. It is particularly important in the scenario where two CP-even Higgs bosons in the two-Higgs-doublet model have the common mass of 125 GeV. Since the final states involve a Standard-Model-like Higgs boson,…
We present an investigation of the dependence of searches for boosted Higgs bosons using jet substructure on the perturbative and non-perturbative parameters of the Herwig++ Monte Carlo event generator. Values are presented for a new tune of the parameters of the event generator, together with the an estimate of the uncertainties based on varying the parameters around the best-fit values.
We present pseudorapidity and transverse momentum distributions for the cross section for the production of the lightest neutral Higgs boson in association with a high-p_T hadronic jet, calculated in the framework of the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM). We discuss the theoretical predictions for the differential cross sections at the Large Hadron Collider and the Tevatron for the most common benchmark scenarios.
In this paper we consider Higgs plus jet production as a process that is sensitive to the linear polarization of gluons inside the unpolarized protons of the LHC. The leading order expressions for the transverse momentum distribution of the Higgs plus jet pair are provided in terms of transverse momentum dependent quark and gluon distributions. This includes both angular independent and azimuthal angular dependent contributions, presented directly in the laboratory frame. Lacking experimental constraints on the linearly polarized gluon distribution, we study its effects on Higgs plus jet produ…
The four-lepton decay mode of the Higgs boson allows for a clean kinematic reconstruction, thereby enabling precision studies of the Higgs boson properties and of its production dynamics. We compute the NNLO QCD corrections to fiducial cross sections relevant to this decay mode in the gluon-fusion production of a Higgs boson in association with a hadronic jet, and study the impact of the QCD corrections on the fiducial acceptance factors in inclusive Higgs and Higgs-plus-jet production. We investigate in detail the different definitions used in the ATLAS and CMS measurements to define the fidu…
Jet tagging has become an essential tool for new physics searches at the high-energy frontier. For jets that contain energetic charged leptons we introduce Feature Extended Supervised Tagging (FEST) which, in addition to jet substructure, considers the features of the charged lepton within the jet. With this method we build dedicated taggers to discriminate among boosted $H \to \ell νq \bar q$, $t \to \ell νb$, and QCD jets (with $\ell$ an electron or muon). The taggers have an impressive performance, allowing for overall light jet rejection factors of $10^4-10^5$, for top quark / Higgs boson …
In high energy hadronic collisions, a general CP-violating Higgs boson $Φ$ with accompanying jets can be efficiently produced via gluon fusion, which is mediated by heavy quark loops. In this letter we study the dominant sub-channel $ gg \to Φggg$ of the gluon fusion production process with triple real emission corrections at order $α_s^5$. We go beyond the heavy top limit approximation and include the full mass dependence of the top- and bottom-quark contributions. Furthermore, we show within a toy-model scenario that bottom-quark loop contributions in combination with large values of $\tan β…
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…
We present pseudorapidity and transverse momentum distributions for the cross section for the production of the lightest neutral Higgs boson in association with a high-p_T hadronic jet, calculated in the framework of the minimal supersymmetric standard model. We discuss the theoretical predictions for the differential cross sections at the Large Hadron Collider and the Tevatron. In particular, we present the differences in the distributions compared to the Standard Model.
In these proceedings, we present results for Higgs production at the LHC via gluon fusion with triple real emission corrections and the validity range of the heavy-top effective theory approximation for this process. For a general CP-violating Higgs boson, we show that bottom-quark loop corrections in combination with large values of $\tan β$ significantly distort differential distributions.
We study Higgs boson plus two high energy jets production at the LHC in the kinematics where the two jets are well separated in rapidity. The partonic processes are dominated by the t-channel weak boson fusion (WBF) and gluon fusion (GF) contributions. We derive the associated QCD resummation formalism for the correlation analysis where the total transverse momentum q_\perp of the Higgs boson and two jets is small. Because of different color structures, the resummation results lead to distinguished behaviors: the WBF contribution peaks at relative low q_\perp while all GF channel contributions…
Extra scalar fields are common in beyond Standard Model (SM) new physics, and they may mix with the 125 GeV SM-like Higgs boson discovered at the LHC. This fact suggests possible discovery channels for these new scalar fields with their decay modes involving the 125 GeV Higgs boson. In this work, we explore the LHC search potential of the heavy CP-even Higgs boson H in the two-Higgs-doublet model. We focus on the channel of H decaying to a pair of light CP-even Higgs bosons h, with two h's decaying to two b jets and diphoton sequentially. This channel is particularly involved when the relevant…
We present precise predictions for Higgs boson production in association with a jet. Our calculation is accurate to next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) QCD in the Higgs Effective Field Theory and constitutes the first complete NNLO computation for Higgs production with a final-state jet in hadronic collisions. We include all relevant phenomenological channels and present fully-differential results as well as total cross sections for the LHC. Our NNLO predictions reduce the unphysical scale dependence by more than a factor of two and enhance the total rate by about twenty percent compared to N…
We derive first next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic resummations for jet-veto efficiencies in Higgs and Z-boson production at hadron colliders. Matching with next-to-next-to-leading order results allows us to provide a range of phenomenological predictions for the LHC, including cross-section results, detailed uncertainty estimates and comparisons to current widely-used tools.
We propose a method to probe the coupling of the Higgs to strange quarks by tagging strange jets at future lepton colliders. For this purpose we describe a jet-flavor observable, $J_F$, that is correlated with the flavor of the quark associated with the hard part of the jet. Using this variable, we set up a strangeness tagger aimed at studying the decay $h\to s\bar{s}$. We determine the sensitivity of our method to the strange Yukawa coupling, and find it to be of the order of the standard-model expectation.
The Standard Model Higgs boson may be mixed with another scalar that does not couple to fermions. The electroweak quantum numbers of such an additional scalar can be determined by measuring the quartic Higgs-Higgs-vector-vector couplings, which contribute---along with the coveted triple Higgs coupling---to double Higgs production in $e^+e^-$ collisions. We show that simultaneous sensitivity to the quartic Higgs-Higgs-vector-vector coupling and the triple Higgs coupling can be obtained using measurements of the double Higgs production cross section at two different e+e- center-of-mass energies.…
We consider the simultaneous measurement of the Higgs ($p_t^{\tiny{\mbox{H}}}$) and the leading jet ($p_t^{\tiny{\mbox{J}}}$) transverse momentum in hadronic Higgs-boson production, and perform the resummation of the large logarithmic corrections that originate in the limit $p_t^{\tiny{\mbox{H}}}\,,p_t^{\tiny{\mbox{J}}} \ll m_{\tiny{\mbox{H}}}$ up to next-to-next-to-leading-logarithmic order. This work constitutes the first simultaneous (double differential) resummation for two kinematic observables of which one involves a jet algorithm in hadronic collisions, and provides an important milesto…
We propose a novel method in that quark-gluon tagging of the jets emitted as initial state radiation (ISR) can boost searches of invisible Higgs from gluon fusion processes against irreducible electroweak vector boson productions. While quark ISR typically takes up a dominant portion than gluon in the background processes mainly by frequent quark-gluon initiated hard scatterings at the LHC, gluon ISR portion in the gluon fusion can be significantly larger in the central region of detector. Focusing on invisible Higgs searches using jet substructure variables capturing the new features, we demo…
Geometric correlations between jets as part of hard processes or in addition to hard processes are key ingredients to many LHC analyses. Fox--Wolfram moments systematically describe these correlations in terms of spherical harmonics. These moments, either computed from the tagging jets or from all jets in each event, can significantly improve Higgs searches in weak boson fusion. Applications of Fox--Wolfram moments in LHC analyses obviously surpass jets as analysis objects as well as Higgs searches in terms of analyses.
We extend the recent computation of Higgs boson production in association with a jet through next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbative QCD by including decays of the Higgs boson to electroweak vector bosons. This allows us to compute fiducial cross sections and kinematic distributions including realistic selection criteria for the Higgs boson decay products. As an illustration, we present results for $pp \to H + j \to γγ+ j$ closely following the ATLAS 8 TeV analysis and for $pp \to H+ j \to W W + j \to e^+ μ^- ν\bar ν+ j $ in a CMS-like 13 TeV setup.
We show that, the result recently reported by the CDF collaboration showing an excess in the invariant mass distribution of jet pairs produced in association with a W-boson can be explained by a simple extension of the Standard Model (SM) with an additional quasi-inert Higgs doublet. The two additional neutral Higgs states H^0 and A^0 have a mass of about 150 GeV and decay into a pair of jets. W^\pm H^0/A^0 pairs are produced from the decay of the heavier charged Higgs boson H^\pm. Depending on the precise masses of the neutral and charged Higgs bosons, the model is shown to be in agreement wi…
The Higgs mass determination from diphoton events at the LHC can be affected by interference between the Higgs resonant and continuum background amplitudes with the same initial and final states. For the leading order gluon fusion process, this shift was previously found to exceed 100 MeV, with some dependence on the diphoton mass resolution and the methods used to extract and fit the peak from data. In this paper, I consider the mass shift for the process pp --> jγγ that includes an additional central jet in the final state. For cuts on the transverse momentum of the jet of 25 GeV or more, th…
New TeV-scale physics processes at the LHC can produce Higgs bosons with substantive transverse Lorentz boost, such that the Higgs's decay products are nominally contained in a single jet. In the case of a light Higgs decaying predominantly to bb, previous studies have shown that these Higgs-jets can be identified by capitalizing on jet substructure techniques. In this work, we explore the possibility of also utilizing the subdominant but very distinctive decay h -> tau tau. To this end, we introduce the concept of a ``ditau-jet,'' or a jet consisting of two semi-collinear taus where one or bo…
