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Maximum significance at the LHC and Higgs decays to muons

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Abstract

We present a new way to define and compute the maximum significance achievable for signal and background processes at the LHC, using all available phase space information. As an example, we show that a light Higgs boson produced in weak-boson fusion with a subsequent decay into muons can be extracted from the backgrounds. The method, aimed at phenomenological studies, can be incorporated in parton-level event generators and accommodate parametric descriptions of detector effects for selected observables.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Goldhaber Fellow, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Building 510A, Upton, 11973, NY, USA

    K. Cranmer

  2. Heisenberg Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Physics, Foehringer Ring 6, 80805, Munich, Germany

    T. Plehn

  3. School of Physics, University of Edinburgh, James Clerk Maxwell Building, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, Scotland

    T. Plehn

Authors
  1. K. Cranmer
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  2. T. Plehn
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Correspondence to T. Plehn.

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Cranmer, K., Plehn, T. Maximum significance at the LHC and Higgs decays to muons. Eur. Phys. J. C 51, 415–420 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-007-0309-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-007-0309-4

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