Thesis

Search for New Physics in the associated production channel of a Higgs and a W boson

• Call:

  IDPASC Portugal - PHD Programme 2019

• Academic Year:

  2019 / 2020

• Domain:

  Experimental Particle Physics

• Supervisor:

  Patricia Conde Muino

• Co-Supervisor:

  Ricardo Gonçalo

• Institution:

  Instituto Superior Técnico

• Host Institution:

  Laboratório de Instrumentação e Física Experimental de Partículas

• Abstract:

  Since the discovery of the Higgs boson, the precise measurement of its properties has become a fundamental part of the ATLAS Physics programme. The recent announcement of the observation of the Higgs decay to b-quarks and the associated production of the Higgs with top quarks, done by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at CERN, probe directly the coupling of the Higgs to quarks and constituted an important step forward in the understanding of the Higgs mechanism. As the LHC continues to take data and more luminosity is accumulated, more precise measurements of the Higgs boson properties are possible, opening the door to search for new physics in the Higgs sector. In this line, the study of the high transverse momentum (high-pT) Higgs production, in the associated production channel with a W boson, is sensitive to new physics in the HWW vertex and constitutes one of the measurements to be done in the near future at the ATLAS collaboration. This project focuses on the study of the high-pT Higgs boson production cross section in the associated production channel with a W boson, when the W decays to a lepton and a neutrino and the Higgs to b-quarks. The ATLAS Portuguese team has contributed to the observation of the Higgs boson decays to b-quarks in this channel and is currently involved in the measurements of the cross section production at high-pT. This work requires the use of dedicated reconstruction techniques for the identification of two highly collimated b-jets, produced in the decay of the Higgs boson. Machine Learning techniques will be developed to improve the performance of this methods. The student will be part of the ATLAS Portuguese team participating in this analysis. The work will be developed in an international collaboration and the results obtained will be presented at CERN. The student is expected to contribute in addition to the data taking and detector operation activities, both at CERN and at LIP.