No Arabic abstract
Jet identification tools are crucial for new physics searches at the LHC and at future colliders. We introduce the concept of Mass Unspecific Supervised Tagging (MUST) which relies on considering both jet mass and transverse momentum varying over wide ranges as input variables - together with jet substructure observables - of a multivariate tool. This approach not only provides a single efficient tagger for arbitrary ranges of jet mass and transverse momentum, but also an optimal solution for the mass correlation problem inherent to current taggers. By training neural networks, we build MUST-inspired generic and multi-pronged jet taggers which, when tested with various new physics signals, clearly outperform the variables commonly used by experiments to discriminate signal from background. These taggers are also efficient to spot signals for which they have not been trained. Taggers can also be built to determine, with a high degree of confidence, the prongness of a jet, which would be of utmost importance in case a new physics signal is discovered.
We evaluate the phenomenological applicability of the dynamical grooming technique, introduced in [1], to boosted W and top tagging at LHC conditions. An extension of our method intended for multi-prong decays with an internal mass scale, such as the top quark decay, is presented. First, we tackle the reconstruction of the mass distribution of W and top jets quantifying the smearing due to pileup. When compared to state-of-the-art grooming algorithms like SoftDrop and its recursive version, dynamical grooming shows an enhanced resilience to background fluctuations. In addition, we asses the discriminating power of dynamical grooming to distinguish W (top) jets from QCD ones by performing a two-step analysis: introduce a cut on the groomed mass around the W (top) mass peak followed by a restriction on the N-subjettinnes ratio $tau_{21}$ ($tau_{32}$). For W jets, the out-of-the-box version of dynamical grooming, free of ad-hoc parameters, results into a comparable performance to SoftDrop. Regarding the top tagger efficiency, 3-prong dynamical grooming, in spite of its simplicity, presents better performance than SoftDrop and similar results to Recursive SoftDrop.
Based on the jet image approach, which treats the energy deposition in each calorimeter cell as the pixel intensity, the Convolutional neural network (CNN) method has been found to achieve a sizable improvement in jet tagging compared to the traditional jet substructure analysis. In this work, the Mask R-CNN framework is adopted to reconstruct Higgs jets in collider-like events, with the effects of pileup contamination taken into account. This automatic jet reconstruction method achieves higher efficiency of Higgs jet detection and higher accuracy of Higgs boson four-momentum reconstruction than traditional jet clustering and jet substructure tagging methods. Moreover, the Mask R-CNN trained on events containing a single Higgs jet is capable of detecting one or more Higgs jets in events of several different processes, without apparent degradation in reconstruction efficiency and accuracy. The outputs of the network also serve as new handles for the $tbar{t}$ background suppression, complementing to traditional jet substructure variables.
The impact of event colour structure on the performance of the Johns-Hopkins, CMS, HEPToptagger and N-Subjettiness algorithms is investigated by studying colour singlet and colour octet resonances decaying to top-quark pairs. Large differences in top-tagging efficiency are observed due to the different colour charge of each resonance. These differences are quantified as a function of the algorithm parameters, the jet size parameter and the probability to misidentify light quarks and gluons as top candidates. We suggest that future experimental searches would benefit from optimising the choice of algorithm parameters in order to minimise this source of model dependency.
A method is proposed for distinguishing highly boosted hadronically decaying Ws (W-jets) from QCD-jets using jet substructure. Previous methods, such as the filtering/mass-drop method, can give a factor of ~2 improvement in S/sqrt(B) for jet pT > 200 GeV. In contrast, a multivariate approach including new discriminants such as R-cores, which characterize the shape of the W-jet, subjet planar flow, and grooming-sensitivities is shown to provide a much larger factor of ~5 improvement in S/sqrt(B). For longitudinally polarized Ws, such as those coming from many new physics models, the discrimination is even better. Comparing different Monte Carlo simulations, we observe a sensitivity of some variables to the underlying event; however, even with a conservative estimates, the multivariate approach is very powerful. Applications to semileptonic WW resonance searches and all-hadronic W+jet searches at the LHC are also discussed. Code implementing our W-jet tagging algorithm is publicly available at http://jets.physics.harvard.edu/wtag
We show that the signature of two boosted $W$-jets plus large missing energy is very promising to probe heavy charged resonances ($X^pm$) through the process of $ppto X^+X^-to W^+W^- X^0 X^0$ where $X^0$ denotes dark matter candidate. The hadronic decay mode of the $W$ boson is considered to maximize the number of signal events. When the mass split between $X^pm$ and $X^0$ is large, one has to utilize the jet-substructure technique to analyze the boosted $W$-jet. For illustration we consider the process of chargino pair production at the LHC, i.e., $ppto chi_1^+chi^-_1 to W^+W^-chi_1^0chi_1^0$, and demonstrate that the proposed signature is able to cover more parameter space of $m_{chi_1^pm}$ and $m_{chi_1^0}$ than the conventional signature of multiple leptons plus missing energy. More importantly, the signature of our interests is not sensitive to the spin of heavy resonances.