Project

Measurement of Higgs boson decays to charm quark antiquark pairs in association with top quark antiquark pair production at the CMS experiment.

Code
1228724N
Duration
01 October 2023 → 30 September 2026
Funding
Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO)
Promotor
Research disciplines
  • Natural sciences
    • Experimental particle physics
Keywords
Higgs boson physics Top quark physics Charm jet identification
 
Project description

The discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2012 completed the standard model (SM) of particle physics. With the addition of the Higgs boson the SM becomes one of the most successful theories to date, as such its predictions agree with the experimental data at the energy scales probed so far remarkably well. On the other hand there exist several observed phenomena in nature, such as dark matter, matter antimatter asymmetry, or the non-zero mass of neutrinos, which hint towards an extended SM. All these constitute a strong motivation to use LHC data to further test the predictions of the SM at an even higher precision. Precise measurement of the properties of the Higgs boson, in particular its interaction strength with elementary particles, is the highest priority of the LHC physics program in the coming years. This proposal focuses on the measurement of the Higgs boson decay to charm quarks in ttH(cc) signatures, where the Higgs boson is produced in association with a top quark antiquark pair. The Higgs boson is predicted to interact with quarks proportional to the particle's mass. With the large amount of data collected by the CMS experiment during LHC Run 2, and what will be collected during Run 3, the measurement of the coupling to lighter quarks like the charm quark will also become accessible. The observation of this coupling will be one of the major milestones expected from the physics program at Run 3.