High Energy Physics Seminar

Searches for the Higgs boson decaying to bottom quark-antiquark pair in the gluon fusion production mode were long considered hopeless due to the overwhelming background from QCD production of bottom quarks. Here, for the first time, we show that we can access this process in the boosted topology, in which the Higgs to bb system is reconstructed as a single, large-radius jet.  Jet substructure and newly-developed dedicated b tagging techniques are used in this search for boosted Higgs to bb at the LHC. The data-driven background estimation strategy and the signal extraction are validated with boosted Z to bb decays.  The Z to bb in the single-jet topology is observed  for the first time  with a significance of 5.1 standard deviations. The experimental techniques developed to search for boosted Higgs bosons, and validated through the first observation of boosted Z(bb̄ ) are crucial as they enable searches for previously inaccessible new physics scenarios. The Higgs boson can be used as a discovery tool, assuming new physics will couple preferentially to the electroweak sector.