Measurement of the Higgs boson production rate in association with top quarks in final states with electrons, muons, and hadronically decaying tau leptons at √s=13Te

TLDR: The most sensitive measurement of the Higgs boson coupling to the tau lepton was obtained in this paper, where the authors used machine learning techniques and matrix-element methods.

Abstract: The rate for Higgs ( $${\mathrm{H}} $$ ) bosons production in association with either one ( $${\mathrm{t}} {\mathrm{H}} $$ ) or two ( $${\mathrm{t}} {{\overline{{{\mathrm{t}}}}}} {\mathrm{H}} $$ ) top quarks is measured in final states containing multiple electrons, muons, or tau leptons decaying to hadrons and a neutrino, using proton–proton collisions recorded at a center-of-mass energy of $$13\,\text {TeV} $$ by the CMS experiment. The analyzed data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 137 $$\,\text {fb}^{-1}$$ . The analysis is aimed at events that contain $${\mathrm{H}} \rightarrow {\mathrm{W}} {\mathrm{W}} $$ , $${\mathrm{H}} \rightarrow {\uptau } {\uptau } $$ , or $${\mathrm{H}} \rightarrow {\mathrm{Z}} {\mathrm{Z}} $$ decays and each of the top quark(s) decays either to lepton+jets or all-jet channels. Sensitivity to signal is maximized by including ten signatures in the analysis, depending on the lepton multiplicity. The separation among $${\mathrm{t}} {\mathrm{H}} $$ , $${\mathrm{t}} {{\overline{{{\mathrm{t}}}}}} {\mathrm{H}} $$ , and the backgrounds is enhanced through machine-learning techniques and matrix-element methods. The measured production rates for the $${\mathrm{t}} {{\overline{{{\mathrm{t}}}}}} {\mathrm{H}} $$ and $${\mathrm{t}} {\mathrm{H}} $$ signals correspond to $$0.92 \pm 0.19\,\text {(stat)} ^{+0.17}_{-0.13}\,\text {(syst)} $$ and $$5.7 \pm 2.7\,\text {(stat)} \pm 3.0\,\text {(syst)} $$ of their respective standard model (SM) expectations. The corresponding observed (expected) significance amounts to 4.7 (5.2) standard deviations for $${\mathrm{t}} {{\overline{{{\mathrm{t}}}}}} {\mathrm{H}} $$ , and to 1.4 (0.3) for $${\mathrm{t}} {\mathrm{H}} $$ production. Assuming that the Higgs boson coupling to the tau lepton is equal in strength to its expectation in the SM, the coupling $$y_{{\mathrm{t}}}$$ of the Higgs boson to the top quark divided by its SM expectation, $$\kappa _{{\mathrm{t}}}=y_{{\mathrm{t}}}/y_{{\mathrm{t}}}^{\mathrm {SM}}$$ , is constrained to be within $$-0.9< \kappa _{{\mathrm{t}}}< -0.7$$ or $$0.7< \kappa _{{\mathrm{t}}}< 1.1$$ , at 95% confidence level. This result is the most sensitive measurement of the $${\mathrm{t}} {{\overline{{{\mathrm{t}}}}}} {\mathrm{H}} $$ production rate to date.