Implementing Tau Reconstruction and Histograms for the Doubly-Charged Higgs Boson
Session Number
3
Advisor(s)
Dr. Peter Dong, IMSA
Location
B110
Discipline
Physical Science
Start Date
15-4-2026 2:15 PM
End Date
15-4-2026 3:00 PM
Abstract
Some beyond the standard model (BSM) theories predict that in addition to the Higgs boson, there may be other scalar bosons, which would provide an explanation for neutrino masses. This particle, the doubly-charged Higgs boson (H++), has a primary decay mechanism involving lepton final states. Electrons and muons have distinct signatures in the detector and are thus reconstructed directly. Taus, however, decay promptly, requiring a specialized identification process in order to reconstruct their hadronic decay products. Additional identification factors need to be implemented to distinguish signal taus from background jets. These factors include transverse momentum, pseudorapidity, and invariant mass to ensure that the taus are properly reconstructed. The implementation of taus included extending the NanoAOD framework to include the software for hadronic tau objects. Four-momentum vectors were created for kinematic analysis, and generator-level information was used to validate decay mechanisms. Once added, histogram outputs were checked to validate reconstruction performance and ensure consistency amongst other signatures. This implementation allows for the inclusion of H++ to hadronic tau decays in this search.
Implementing Tau Reconstruction and Histograms for the Doubly-Charged Higgs Boson
B110
Some beyond the standard model (BSM) theories predict that in addition to the Higgs boson, there may be other scalar bosons, which would provide an explanation for neutrino masses. This particle, the doubly-charged Higgs boson (H++), has a primary decay mechanism involving lepton final states. Electrons and muons have distinct signatures in the detector and are thus reconstructed directly. Taus, however, decay promptly, requiring a specialized identification process in order to reconstruct their hadronic decay products. Additional identification factors need to be implemented to distinguish signal taus from background jets. These factors include transverse momentum, pseudorapidity, and invariant mass to ensure that the taus are properly reconstructed. The implementation of taus included extending the NanoAOD framework to include the software for hadronic tau objects. Four-momentum vectors were created for kinematic analysis, and generator-level information was used to validate decay mechanisms. Once added, histogram outputs were checked to validate reconstruction performance and ensure consistency amongst other signatures. This implementation allows for the inclusion of H++ to hadronic tau decays in this search.