We develop a matrix element based reconstruction method called event deconstruction. The method uses information from the hard matrix element and a parton shower to assign probabilities to whether a final state was initiated by a signal or background process. We apply this method in the signal process of a Z decaying to boosted top quarks in an all hadronic final state and discuss envisioned improvements of the method. We find that event deconstruction can considerably improve on existing reconstruction techniques.
We introduce shower deconstruction, a method to look for new physics in a hadronic environment. The method aims to be a full information approach using small jets. It assigns to each event a number chi that is an estimate of the ratio of the probability for a signal process to produce that event to the probability for a background process to produce that event. The analytic functions we derive to calculate these probabilities mimic what full event generators like Pythia or Herwig do and can be depicted in a diagrammatic way. As an example, we apply this method to a boosted Higgs boson produced in association with a Z-boson and show that this method can be useful to discriminate this signal from the Z+jets background.
We develop a new method for tagging jets produced by hadronically decaying top quarks. The method is an application of shower deconstruction, a maximum information approach that was previously applied to identifying jets produced by Higgs bosons that decay to bottom quarks. We tag an observed jet as a top jet based on a cut on a calculated variable that is an approximation to the ratio of the likelihood that a top jet would have the structure of the observed jet to the likelihood that a non-top QCD jet would have this structure. We find that the shower deconstruction based tagger can perform better in discriminating boosted top quark jets from QCD jets than other publicly available tagging algorithms.
A Beta-beam would be a high intensity source of pure $ u_e$ and/or $bar u_e$ flux with known spectrum, ideal for precision measurements. Myriad of possible set-ups with suitable choices of baselines, detectors and the beta-beam neutrino source with desired energies have been put forth in the literature. In this talk we present a comparitive discussion of the physics reach of a few such experimental set-ups.
Color-singlet gauge bosons with renormalizable couplings to quarks but not to leptons must interact with additional fermions (anomalons) required to cancel the gauge anomalies. Analyzing the decays of such leptophobic bosons into anomalons, I show that they produce final states involving leptons at the LHC. Resonant production of a flavor-universal leptophobic $Z$ boson leads to cascade decays via anomalons, whose signatures include a leptonically decaying $Z$, missing energy and several jets. A $Z$ boson that couples to the right-handed quarks of the first and second generations undergoes cascade decays that violate lepton universality and include signals with two leptons and jets, or with a Higgs boson, a lepton, a $W$ and missing energy.