Searches for Higgs bosons with hadronically decaying tau leptons

by Henrik Öhman (Uppsala universitet)

Friday 18 Nov 2016, 11:00 → 11:45 Europe/Stockholm

Osseenska rummet (Å73121) (Ångström)

This thesis describes a measurement of the Standard Model Higgs boson coupling to fermions in decays to two τ-leptons, a search for charged Higgs bosons in decays to a τ-lepton and a neutrino, as well as the reconstruction, identification and triggering of hadronically decaying τ-leptons. The data considered are collected by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. The reconstruction and identification of hadronically decaying τ-leptons in the ATLAS experiment during Run 2 of the Large Hadron Collider are described, and the performance of the τ trigger is measured in events with top–antitop-quark pairs using data from 13 TeV proton–proton collisions, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3.2 fb^-1, collected in 2015, and 11.5 fb^-1, collected in 2016. Hadronically decaying τ-leptons are of importance to many physical processes involving Higgs bosons. The coupling of the Standard Model Higgs boson to fermions is measured in decays to two τ-leptons using 7 TeV data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.5 fb^-1, collected in 2011, and 8 TeV data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb^-1, collected in 2012. The signal strength is measured to be μ = 1.4, corresponding to an excess over the background-only model of 4.5σ. Charged Higgs bosons are searched for in decays to a τ-lepton and a neutrino, where the τ-lepton decays hadronically. 13 TeV data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 14.7 fb^-1, collected in 2015 and 2016, are used. No excess over the Standard Model background is observed, and the 95 % confidence-level exclusion limits on σ(pp → [b]tH+) × (H+ → τν) are set to 2.0 pb–8 fb in the range 200–2000 GeV.

Slides ohman_seminar.pdf