Higgs to di-photon workshop hosted by ATLAS

CERN has recently hosted an HGamma workshop at the Business Center in St-Genis. This 2.5 day workshop (from Monday April 27th to Wednesday April 29th) was intended to assess the readiness of HGamma analyses for run2. HGamma is the name given to this particular decay channel being studied. A walkthrough for early analyses was given followed by a review of the status of combined performance and common tools. This was followed by a look at all longer term analyses which require more data.

The Wits members involved in the HGamma group include:

1. Luis March 
2. Mthokozisi Masuku 
3. Bruce Mellado 
4. Stefan von Buddenbrock 
5. Deepak Kar 
6. Oscar Kureba 
7. Shell-May Liao 
8. Robert Graham Reed 
9. Xifeng Ruan 
10. Kehinde Gbenga Tomiwa

The University of the Witwatersrand had a total of five presentations. The presenters and topic overviews were:

• Luis March - This talk discussed the new Missing Transverse Momentum (ETmiss) definition that will combat the issues associated with the increase in collision energy. The presentation showed the status and development of the ETmiss for Run-II, comparing the performance of two ET miss definitions by using Monte Carlo datasets. In addition, the status of an ETmiss tool which will be used by the missing energy groups was shown.

• Robert Reed - An overview talk about the status of the analysis framework for the Higgs to di-photon and di-bjet decay channel. This is a sub analysis of the HGamma channel. The talk included a short tutorial on how to run the analysis and the selection criteria involved. Further studies were presented regarding jet energy resolutions as well as simulation type comparisons.

• Xifeng Ruan - Presented three talks:

1. This talk presented the inauguration of a new study involving the Higgs and missing transverse energy (ETmiss). This is a primary candidate in the study for beyond the Standard Model. The talk involved the understanding of the missing transverse energy from the 2011, 2012 and 2015 data to look for new physics. 
2. A summary of the recent simulation samples was shown. The simulation samples are the theoretical estimates we should observe during data taking. The ETmiss group has requested new samples for study for the new data period in 2015. 
3. A detailed look at the future prospects of the ETmiss study was discussed. This included the intermediate and high ETmiss/BSM groups. This also included all the ongoing efforts in the group.

HDAYS 2014 in Santander came to a close

HDAYS 2014 in Santander came to a close today. It's been a blast, as always. Great people and wonderful location. Excellent overview of the riches of Higgs physics at the LHC. Run II promises to be a very exciting period for Higgs physics that will set the stage for future endeavours. HDAYS 2015 is set for September 14th-18th. Below is the group photo

Lecturing at the International Summer School on TeV Energy Experimental Physics at the Institute of High Energy Physics in Beijing

It was an honour to lecture at the first International Summer School on TeV Energy Experimental Physics at the Institute of High Energy Physics in Beijing.  Rolf Heuer, the CERN Director General, issued a congratulatory message to the organisers. Greetings from Beijing. 

See below a group picture. One can see an impressive growth in the number of students interested in High-Energy Physics in China. Most of the students were advanced undergraduate and first/second year graduate students taking courses. This is great news for the development of a robust high-energy physics community in China. This is very encouraging in the light of China's plans to build a new accelerator.

The students enjoyed nice facilities with state-of-the-art equipment. In addition to lectures students went through tutorials. This picture was taken towards the end of the school. The vast majority of the students stayed in the school till the end. Discussions were fun.

Gave the experimental Higgs lectures and the experimental summary on searches for non-SUSY physics beyond the Standard Model. It was nice to see students ask good questions and to see the genuine interest in the subject. 

Announcement of Kruger 2014

WORKSHOP ON DISCOVERY PHYSICS AT THE LHC

KRUGER-2014

December 1 - 6, 2014

Protea Hotel Kruger Gate

Portia Shabangu Road, Skukuza, Mpumulanga, South Africa
Dear Colleagues

We are pleased to announce the Third  Biennial

   "Workshop on Discovery Physics at the LHC" (KRUGER 2014)
The Workshop will be held at the 4-star Protea Hotel Kruger Gate,
just 100 meters from the  entrance to the Kruger National Park.

Please find details in the conference web page
http://www.kruger2014.tlabs.ac.za
The conference aims to promote scientific exchange of new results
and development of
novel ideas and models related to the physics of the LHC.
The following topics will be covered:
 Particle Physics,
  Heavy Ion Physics,
 Physics  after the discovery of the  Brout-Englert-Higgs boson.
Accommodation, registration, abstract submission and other practical
details can be found
on the web page. Attendance will be limited to about 100 participants
because of the number of available  rooms in the hotel.

Students are encouraged to also take part in a related workshop/school on
  ``Hot and Dense Nuclear & Astrophysical Matter - HDM2014''
which will be organized by Professor Azwinndini
Muronga (amuronga@uj.ac.za)  at the University of Mafeking
November 24 - 28, 2014.

Other related events of interest to students are:
  ``Chris Engelbrecht School in Particle Physics'',
January 12 - 21, 2015,
and the
  ``High Performance Signal and Data Processing'',
January 26 - 30, 2015.
Limited funding for South African students is available.
We look forward to seeing you all in South Africa

The organizers of KRUGER-2014:

O. Boeriu (Witwatersrand, Johannesburg)  Z. Buthelezi  (iThemba LABS)

J. Cleymans (UCT, Cape Town) (Chair)  A. S. Cornell
(NITHeP/Witwatersrand, Johannesburg)

S. H. Connell (UJ, Johannesburg)  T. Dietel     (UCT, Cape Town)

S. Frtsch    (iThemba LABS)  N. Haasbroek  (iThemba LABS) (Secretary)

A. Hamilton (UCT, Cape Town)  W. A. Horowitz (UCT, Cape Town)

S. Karataglidis (UJ, Johannesburg)  B. Mellado  (Witwatersrand, Johannesburg)

E. Sideras-Haddad  (Witwatersrand, Johannesburg)  T. Vickey
(Witwatersrand, Johannesburg)

H. Weigert   (UCT, Cape Town)  S. Yacoob    (UKZN, Durban)

The email address of the conference is kruger2014@tlabs.ac.za

LHeC workshop to take place January 20-21st in Chavannes-de-Bogis, Switzerland

The 2014 LHeC workshop follows the publication of its conceptual design report (CDR) and the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012. Recent LHeC progress concerns the study of the increase of its luminosity to 10^34cm-2s-1, the choice of the frequency of 802 MHz as well as the design towards an energy recovery test facility with up to 1 GeV of electron beam energy. The workshop will discuss progress on the LHeC physics (Higgs, top, heavy ions etc) in conjunction with the evolution and simulation of the detector design. It will consider maximising the ep luminosity in synchronous ep and pp operation at the LHC, including a heavy ion programme, and progress in the design of the ERL test facility at CERN. Very recent developments towards a future multi-TeV proton accelerator at CERN open prospects for ep/eA experimentation at yet enlarged energy. The workshop is open for contributions on the various aspects of the LHeC development and its relation to the LHC. It is prepared by an organising committee in collaboration with the working group convenors and an international advisory committee.

http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=278903

Documentation for "Evidence for Higgs Boson Decays to the τ + τ − Final State with the ATLAS Detector"

ATLAS has just released the documentation for the evidence for the decay H->tautau. The documentation can be found at:

http://cds.cern.ch/record/1632191/files/ATLAS-CONF-2013-108.pdf

The Wits group, some of its members and close collaborators have been involved in this search for a number of years.

ATLAS releases results which show evidence of the Higgs boson decaying to fermions

The ATLAS experiment just released preliminary results that show evidence, with a significance of 4.1 standard deviations, that the Higgs boson decays to two taus (which are fermions).

More information on this very exciting result can be found here:

http://www.atlas.ch/news/2013/higgs-into-fermions.html

Improving Higgs plus Jets analyses through Fox-Wolfram Moments

The preprint with the title "Improving Higgs plus Jets analyses through Fox-Wolfram Moments" has appeared in the archive today. Among other things one can see a discussion on how the jet veto can be replaced by a moment pertaining to extra jet radiation.

The abstract can be found below:

"It is well known that understanding the structure of jet radiation can significantly improve Higgs analyses. Using Fox-Wolfram moments we systematically study the geometric patterns of additional jets in weak boson fusion Higgs production with a decay to photons. First, we find a significant improvement with respect to the standard analysis based on an analysis of the tagging jet correlations. In addition, we show that replacing a jet veto by a Fox-Wolfram moment analysis of the extra jet radiation almost doubles the signal-to-background ratio. Finally, we show that this improvement can also be achieved based on a modified definition of the Fox-Wolfram moments which avoids introducing a new physical scale below the factorization scale. This modification can reduce the impact of theory uncertainties on the Higgs rate and couplings measurements."

The link to the preprint is:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1311.5891

As Tilman likes to say

Aloha