Study of gamma gamma Background in e+e- -> W+W- nu nu -> H nu nu Events at the Tesla e+e- Linear Collider

TL;DR

This study investigates gamma gamma background effects on Higgs production events at the Tesla e+e- linear collider, demonstrating that background can be effectively reduced with advanced vertex tracking and event selection techniques.

Contribution

It introduces a method combining kinematical and vertex topology observables to mitigate gamma gamma background in Higgs event reconstruction at Tesla.

Findings

Gamma gamma background can be substantially reduced.

Vertex tracker improves background discrimination.

Remaining background is confined to forward hadron production.

Abstract

The effect of the overlap of gamma gamma -> hadrons to H nu nu events has been studied for the case of the Tesla e+e- linear collider at 350 GeV. It was found that, due to the significant bunch length and the track extrapolation accuracy provided by the Vertex Tracker, the gamma gamma background to physics events can be substantially reduced, with moderate loss in reconstruction efficiency, by a combination of kinematical and vertex topology observables. The remaining background, being confined to very forward hadron production, does not significantly interfere with the event reconstruction.