Statistical tools and precision of searching for the Higgs boson at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper discusses statistical tools and methods used at the LHC to measure the properties of the Higgs boson, focusing on likelihood-based techniques to evaluate data agreement and measurement precision.

Contribution

It introduces and details likelihood-based statistical methods for Higgs boson property measurement and uncertainty evaluation at the LHC.

Findings

Likelihood functions effectively quantify data-model agreement

Statistical tools improve measurement precision of Higgs properties

Methods help distinguish Higgs signals from background noise

Abstract

Statistical tools have been developed to quantify the agreement between a hypothesis or a model and the observed data for probabilistic phenomena. In this work, we define statistical methods used to measure the properties of the higgs boson in the LHC on the one hand, but also to evaluate the uncertainty and precision on these measurements. They are based on the definition of a likelihood function whose construction will be detailed below. The challenge of HEP is to generate tons of data and to develop powerful analyses to tell if the data indeed contains evidence for the new particle, and confirm it's the expected Higgs boson.