PH4100 MSci Major Projects - ATLAS ttH (H-bb)

Introduction

This project is based on the analysis of simulated data of proton-proton collisions in the ATLAS particle detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The objective is to study the production of Higgs particles in association with a pair of top quarks: the so-called ttH process. Specifically the process of interest (the signal) is when the Higgs boson decays to a pair of b quarks: ttH (H-bb). The project will required the detailed analysis of simulated samples of signal events, as well as analysing all the relevant background processes. In particular, the student will aim to develop event selection procedures to effectively separate the signal from the backgrounds. This will start with the development of a simple cut-based event selection, optimised using relevant metrics. The student can then progress to using instead an event selection based on eg a Fisher discriminant, or more advanced multivariate methods (such as a Neural Network (NN) or a Boosted Decision Tree (BDT)).