Reconstruction of Higgs bosons in the di-tau channel via 3-prong decay

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel reconstruction method for Higgs bosons decaying into tau pairs with one 3-prong decay, enhancing detection and measurement accuracy using a likelihood-based approach.

Contribution

It presents a new kinematic reconstruction technique leveraging decay vertices and missing momentum, improving Higgs boson detection in the di-tau channel.

Findings

Enhanced discrimination between Higgs signal and background

Improved Higgs mass and cross section measurements

Better discovery potential compared to existing methods

Abstract

We propose a method for reconstructing the mass of a particle, such as the Higgs boson, decaying into a pair of tau leptons, of which one subsequently undergoes a 3-prong decay. The kinematics is solved using information from the visible decay products, the missing transverse momentum, and the 3-prong tau decay vertex, with the detector resolution taken into account using a likelihood method. The method is shown to give good discrimination between a 125 GeV Higgs boson signal and the dominant backgrounds, such as Z decays to tau tau and W plus jets production. As a result, we find an improvement, compared to existing methods for this channel, in the discovery potential, as well as in measurements of the Higgs boson mass and production cross section times branching ratio.