Optimization of neutrino measurement in a search for a charged Higgs boson with ATLAS
Date
2025
Authors
Brewster, Josephine
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
University Of Victoria
Abstract
The Standard Model of Particle Physics (SM) is our best understanding of the fundamental building blocks of our universe. It is an extremely good model, however we know that it is not complete. Many beyond SM models include an extended Higgs sector. This project is working with an ATLAS Collaboration analysis group searching for a singly-charged Higgs boson. Like with most particles studied with the ATLAS Detector, if a charged Higgs boson existed we would not be able to measure it directly. We could only measure its decay products. The final decay products being examined in this analysis are three leptons (well-measured) and a neutrino. The neutrino is invisible to the detector and only its transverse momentum is known. The goal of this project is to analyse the current methods for determining the longitudinal momentum of the neutrino and to see if this method can be improved.
By creating a procedure to evaluate different methods, it was found that the current method was working the best with 59% of events evaluated as correct by our metric. The next step of this project is to investigate events with unphysical characteristics caused by uncertainty in neutrino transverse momentum measurements.
Description
Keywords
high energy physics, beyond standard model, Higgs boson, atlas collaboration, particle physics, Large Hadron Collider