Descripción del proyecto
A la búsqueda de interacciones de partículas escurridizas para saber más sobre el origen de la masa
El bosón de Higgs es una partícula elemental especial que media en un campo que otorga masa a todas las partículas elementales. Las interacciones entre el bosón de Higgs y el quark top, la partícula elemental más pesada, son las más fuertes. Estas interacciones constituyen un banco de pruebas excelente para investigar la violación de la simetría carga-paridad (CP). La violación de la CP explica de forma teórica porqué se observa más materia que antimateria en el universo, pero este fenómeno tampoco se ha estudiado suficientemente. El proyecto TheHiggsAndThe7Tops, financiado con fondos europeos, se propone desvelar las propiedades CP de la interacción entre el quark top y el bosón de Higgs a fin de realizar hallazgos sobre el origen de la masa y de la asimetría materia-antimateria.
Objetivo
With the ground-breaking discovery of a new scalar particle, the Higgs boson, in 2012 by ATLAS and CMS, the standard model (SM) of particle physics has been completed. Despite this success, many open questions on the fundamental laws of nature remain unanswered. Among these are how exactly particles acquire their mass and why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe.
One of the most promising avenues to approach these questions is to explore the relation between the Higgs boson and the heaviest known elementary particle: the top quark. Due to its large mass, the top is expected to play a special role in the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking. In order to shed light onto this mechanism, understanding the coupling between the top and the Higgs in great detail and exploring the charge and parity (CP) nature of the Higgs are essential. While the SM Higgs boson is CP-even, many models beyond the SM require a CP-odd component. Higgs-top couplings are expected to provide an unambiguous probe of CP-mixed states.
I will explore for the first time all processes in which a direct determination of the top-Higgs interconnection is feasible, in particular events where the Higgs is produced in association with 1, 2 and 4 top quarks. These are among the most challenging channels at the LHC. I will pioneer a comprehensive programme, consisting of the development of powerful event-reconstruction methods and improved boosting techniques, allowing the first exploitation of novel variables in a beyond-state-of-the-art cross-process analysis, thus unravel the CP-properties in the top-Higgs interaction.
The ultimate goal of the project is the precise direct measurement of the top-Higgs Yukawa coupling, and the first determination of the CP-nature of the Higgs boson in fermion interactions. Confronting these results with the SM and models that go beyond the SM will yield an unprecedented insight into the origin of mass of elementary particles.
Ámbito científico
Palabras clave
Programa(s)
Régimen de financiación
ERC-COG - Consolidator GrantInstitución de acogida
M13 9PL Manchester
Reino Unido