Three-particle templates for boosted Higgs

Abstract

We explore the ability of three-particle templates to distinguish color neutral objects from QCD background. This method is particularly useful to identify the standard model Higgs, as well as other massive neutral particles. Simple cut-based analysis in the overlap distributions of the signal and background is shown to provide a significant rejection power. By combining with other discriminating variables, such as planar flow, and several variables that depend on the partonic template, three-particle templates are used to characterize the influence of gluon emission and color flow in collider events. The performance of the method is discussed for the case of a highly boosted Higgs in association with a leptonically-decaying W boson.

32 pages, 13 figures. v2: Acknowledgments added, typos fixed. v3: added comparison to filtering method, minor correction and acknowledgment added. The version to appear in Phys. Rev. D