Results for the search of a Higgs boson decaying to a bottom quark-antiquark pair produced with a top quark-antiquark pair (t ̄tH) in the lepton plus jets channel in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of √ s = 13 TeV are presented. The data used corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 12.9 fb−1 recorded with the CMS experiment in 2016. To increase the sensitivity of the search, selected events are categorized by number of jets and number of b-tagged jets resulting in different expected signal and background rates. For each category two multivariate techniques are combined to separate the signal and background events. A machine learning process called a boosted decision tree (BDT) is trained on the two types of classes of events and then split into high and low purity based on the output. The physics motivated matrix element method (MEM) is applied to the BDT output to obtain the final two dimensional discriminator. The result is presented in terms of the t ̄tH signal strength modifier μ, the ratio of the observed t ̄tH production cross section relative to the expected cross section based on a 125 GeV Standard Model Higgs boson. A combined fit of the final discriminant in all categories of the lepton plus jets channel results an observed (expected) upper limit of μ

Abstract: We have performed a search for the Standard Model Higgs boson produced in association with top quarks in the lepton plus jets channel. We impose no constraints on the decay of the Higgs boson. We employ ensembles of neural networks to discriminate events containing a Higgs boson from the dominant di-top background, and set upper bounds on the Higgs production cross section. At a Higgs boson mass mH = 120 GeV/c2, we expect to exclude a cross section 12.7 times the Standard Model prediction, and we observe an exclusion 27.4 times the Standard Model prediction with 95% confidence.

The theoretical foundations of the Standard Model of elementary particles relies on the existence of the Higgs boson, a particle which has been revealed for the first time by the experiments run at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2012. As the Higgs boson is an unstable particle, its search strategies were based on its decay products. In this thesis, Francesco Pandolfi conducted a search for the Higgs boson in the H → ZZ → l + l - qq Decay Channel with 4.6 fb -1 of 7 TeV proton-proton collision data collected by the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment. The presence of jets in the final state poses a series of challenges to the experimenter: both from a technical point of view, as jets are complex objects and necessitate of ad-hoc reconstruction techniques, and from an analytical one, as backgrounds with jets are copious at hadron colliders, therefore analyses must obtain high degrees of background rejection in order to achieve competitive sensitivity. This is accomplished by following two directives: the use of an angular likelihood discriminant, capable of discriminating events likely to originate from the decay of a scalar boson from non-resonant backgrounds, and by using jet parton flavor tagging, selecting jets compatible with quark hadronization and discarding jets more likely to be initiated by gluons. The events passing the selection requirements in 4.6 fb -1 of data collected by the CMS detector are examined, in the search of a possible signal compatible with the decay of a heavy Higgs boson. The thesis describes the statistical tools and the results of this analysis. This work is a paradigm for studies of the Higgs boson with final states with jets. The non-expert physicists will enjoy a complete and eminently readable description of a proton-proton collider analysis. At the same time, the expert reader will learn the details of the searches done with jets at CMS.

The work presented in this PhD dissertation is the first search at CMS for Higgs bosons produced in association with top quarks (ttH) in a final state consisting of only jets. The results presented in this book uncover a new class of ttH events that will help us elucidate our understanding of the Yukawa sector interactions between the Higgs boson and the top quark. Despite this being the most common decay signature for ttH, a large contamination of SM backgrounds makes it the most challenging for extracting a signal from data. The PhD thesis presents many sophisticated tools and techniques that were developed in order to overcome these challenges. These tools pave the way for future analyses to investigate other standard model and beyond-standard model physics.

The discovery in 2012 of the last elementary particle predicted by the Standard Model, the Higgs boson, has opened a new era in particle physics. One of the objectives now is to probe the coupling of the Higgs boson to other particles in order to confirm the validity of the model. The work of this thesis focused initially on the identification of jets coming from b quark at trigger level. The goal is to allow for the selection of one thousand events among the forty million produced every second at the LHC, by identifiying objects present in the final states of interesting physics processes such as the associated production of a Higgs boson decaying in a pair of b quark with a Z boson decaying into undetected neutrinos. The work then moved to the study of the coupling of the Higgs boson to the quark top, most massive particle in the Standard Model. After a study of one of the important background of the associated production of the Higgs boson and a top quark pair, a new method called matrix element method has been used to improve the discrimination between signal and background. This analysis has led to the first experimental evidence of coupling between the Higgs boson and the top quark.