Research Group: Particle Physics Research Centre Number of Students: 1- Length of Study in Years: 3 Full-time Project: yes
Discuss with supervisor and/or admissions tutor
In our Standard Model, the breaking of Electroweak symmetry by the Higgs field leads to massive force carriers and Higgs bosons. While the Higgs coupling to force carriers has been observed already in 2012, the Higgs Yukawa coupling to quarks has only recently been directly observed in the decay to two b-quarks. With a larger data set, we will be able to measure this coupling with a higher precision in order to test the predictions of the Standard-Model and to measure key kinematic distributions of the decay products. In order to get a clean selection, we focus on the associated production of a Higgs boson and a Z boson for which the associated direct production of a Z boson with bottom quarks constitutes a major background.
Basic programming skills required. The student is encouraged to spend a year at the CERN experiment in Geneva.
SPCS Academics: Ulla Blumenschein