Heavy flavour jet abundances and tagging rates analytically determined

TL;DR

This paper presents an analytical method to determine heavy and light flavour jet tagging efficiencies and uncertainties using a system of non-linear equations, enhancing precision in heavy flavour physics measurements.

Contribution

It introduces an analytical solution to a system of equations for jet tagging efficiencies, including singularity analysis and uncertainty propagation, improving upon previous numerical methods.

Findings

Analytical solutions for tagging efficiencies are derived.

Singularity analysis offers insights into sample composition and algorithm choices.

Uncertainty estimation accounts for correlations, improving accuracy.

Abstract

Heavy flavour jet tagging is widely used in the determination of cross sections including the production of heavy flavoured quarks. This requires the knowledge of heavy and light flavour jet tagging efficiencies and their uncertainties. A system of eight non-linear equations can be used to determine these quantities by means of two different tagging algorithms and two data sets which differ in heavy flavour jet content. The analytical solution of this system of equations, derived by means of resultants is described in detail, including a discussion about its singularities which provide important insights, such as prescriptions to prevent badly chosen sample flavour compositions and working points of the used tagging algorithms. The analytical solution also provides an efficient and transparent way to determine the uncertainties on the solved quantities, taking correlations into account.