Evidence for a particle produced in association with weak bosons and decaying to a bottom-antibottom quark pair in Standard Model Higgs search at the Tevatron.

by Gregorio Bernardi (LPNHE Paris 6 and 7)

Tuesday 31 Jul 2012, 11:00 → 12:00 Europe/Zurich

503/1-001 - Council Chamber (CERN)

We combine results from the CDF and D0 Collaborations on direct searches for the standard model (SM) Higgs boson (H) in ppbar collisions at the Fermilab Tevatron, using 10 fb-1 of data. Searches are carried out for Higgs boson masses between 100 and 200 GeV. There is a significant excess of data events with respect to the background estimation in the mass range 115 < mH  < 135 GeV, consistent with the Higgs-like particle recently observed by ATLAS and CMS.
At mH = 120 GeV, the p-value for a background fluctuation to produce this excess corresponds to a local (global) significance of 3.0 (2.5) standard deviations. We also combine separately searches for H--> bb and H --> WW. We find that the excess is concentrated in the H --> bb channel, appearing in the searches over a broad range of mH, as expected from the bb resolution in our detectors. The excess is most significant in the mass range between 120 and 135 GeV.  The largest local significance is  3.3 standard deviations, corresponding  to a global significance of 3.1 standard deviations. We interpret this as evidence for the presence of a new particle consistent with  the standard model Higgs boson, which is produced in association with a weak vector boson and decays to a bottom-antibottom quark pair.

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Poster CERNEPSeminar31.07.2012.pdf

Slides bernardi-cern-2012-v3.pdf

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