Logo image
Search for a standard model Higgs boson produced in association with a top-quark pair and decaying to bottom quarks using a matrix element method
Journal article   Open access

Search for a standard model Higgs boson produced in association with a top-quark pair and decaying to bottom quarks using a matrix element method

CMS Collaboration, Philip S Baringer, Alice Bean, Michael J Murray, Stephen J Sanders and Yasar Onel
The European Physical Journal C, Vol.75(6), 251
06/09/2015
DOI: 10.1140/epjc/s10052-015-3454-1
PMCID: PMC4464697
PMID: 26097407
url
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-015-3454-1View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

A search for a standard model Higgs boson produced in association with a top-quark pair and decaying to bottom quarks is presented. Events with hadronic jets and one or two oppositely charged leptons are selected from a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.5fb-1 collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC in pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8TeV. In order to separate the signal from the larger tt¯ + jets background, this analysis uses a matrix element method that assigns a probability density value to each reconstructed event under signal or background hypotheses. The ratio between the two values is used in a maximum likelihood fit to extract the signal yield. The results are presented in terms of the measured signal strength modifier, μ, relative to the standard model prediction for a Higgs boson mass of 125GeV. The observed (expected) exclusion limit at a 95 % confidence level is μ[removed]

Details

Logo image