Doctoral Dissertations
Date of Award
12-2000
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
University
University of Chicago
Department
Department of Physics
First Advisor
Mark Oreglia, Ph.D.
Keywords
Higgs boson, neural network, tau, CERN, LEP, supersymmetry
Subject Categories
Elementary Particles and Fields and String Theory | Physical Sciences and Mathematics | Physics
Abstract
Searches for neutral Higgs bosons have been performed with the OPAL detector at LEP. Approximately 170 /pb of e+e- collision data at a center-of-mass energy of 189 GeV have been used to search for the SM process e+e- to HZ as well as for the processes e+e- to hZ and e+e- to hA which occur in extended Higgs theories. The searches are sensitive to final states containing quarks and tau leptons, for which an artificial neural network for the identification of tau leptons was designed. The results have been combined with OPAL searches for other final states to obtain a 95% confidence level lower limit on the SM Higgs boson mass of 91.0 GeV/c^2. In a constrained MSSM scenario, the limits mh > 74.8 GeV/c^2 and mA > 76.5 GeV/c^2 are obtained at 95% CL assuming tan beta > 1, and values of tan beta between 0.72 and 2.19 are excluded at 95% CL for the case of zero scalar top mixing. The parameter spaces of the MSSM and general Type II Two Higgs Doublet Models are explored in detailed scans, and in addition, limits on the production of Higgs-like bosons outside the context of specific models are obtained.
Recommended Citation
Hocker, James Andrew '91, "Searches for Neutral Higgs Bosons in Quark-Antiquark Tau-Antitau Final States using the Opal Detector at LEP" (2000). Doctoral Dissertations. 16.
https://digitalcommons.imsa.edu/alumni_dissertations/16