Construction of a Kinematic Variable Sensitive to the Mass of the Standard Model Higgs Boson in H->WW*->l l nu nu-bar using Symbolic Regression

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel symbolic regression approach to derive a kinematic variable sensitive to the Higgs boson mass in the H->WW*->l l nu nu-bar decay channel, enabling improved mass resolution without explicit reconstruction.

Contribution

It applies symbolic regression to particle physics, deriving a new analytic variable for Higgs mass estimation in a challenging decay channel, a first in the field.

Findings

Achieves Higgs mass resolution of 1-4 GeV for 130-190 GeV mass range.

Demonstrates the first application of symbolic regression in particle physics.

Provides a new method for mass determination in channels with missing energy.

Abstract

We derive a kinematic variable that is sensitive to the mass of the Standard Model Higgs boson (M_H) in the H->WW*->l l nu nu-bar channel using symbolic regression method. Explicit mass reconstruction is not possible in this channel due to the presence of two neutrinos which escape detection. Mass determination problem is that of finding a mass-sensitive function that depends on the measured observables. We use symbolic regression, which is an analytical approach to the problem of non-linear regression, to derive an analytic formula sensitive to M_H from the two lepton momenta and the missing transverse momentum. Using the newly-derived mass-sensitive variable, we expect Higgs mass resolutions between 1 to 4 GeV for M_H between 130 and 190 GeV at the LHC with 10 fb^-1 of data. This is the first time symbolic regression method has been applied to a particle physics problem.