How to Unfold Top Decays

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel generative unfolding method for top-quark decay data that improves the measurement of the top quark mass and the search for unexpected kinematic effects through unbinned, high-dimensional analysis.

Contribution

The paper presents a new unbinned, high-dimensional generative unfolding technique with targeted unbiasing, outperforming standard iterative methods in flexibility and accuracy.

Findings

Significant accuracy improvements over traditional methods

Enhanced applicability and flexibility in data unfolding

Effective measurement of top quark mass and kinematic anomalies

Abstract

Using unfolded top-quark decay data we can measure the top quark mass, as well as search for unexpected kinematic effects. We present a new generative unfolding method for the two tasks and show how they both benefit from unbinned, high-dimensional unfolding. Unlike weight-based or iterative generative methods we include a targeted unbiasing with respect to the training data. This shows significant advantages over standard, iterative methods, in terms of applicability, flexibility and accuracy.