Boosting Higgs discovery - the forgotten channel

TL;DR

This paper proposes using fat jets in the semi-leptonic ZZ decay mode to enhance the detection of a heavy Standard Model Higgs boson, increasing signal events while maintaining statistical significance.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach employing fat jets to improve Higgs discovery prospects in the semi-leptonic ZZ channel, complementing traditional leptonic searches.

Findings

Semi-leptonic ZZ mode increases signal events

Fat jet technique maintains statistical significance

Enhances Higgs detection sensitivity

Abstract

Searches for a heavy Standard Model Higgs boson focus on the 'gold plated mode' where the Higgs decays to two leptonic Z bosons. This channel provides a clean signature, in spite of the small leptonic branching ratios. We show that using fat jets the semi-leptonic ZZ mode significantly increases the number of signal events with a similar statistical significance as the leptonic mode.