Measurement of physical parameters with a weight function method and its application to the Higgs boson mass reconstruction

Abstract

We propose a new method to measure various physical parameters, using characteristic weight functions. This method requires only lepton energy distribution and ideally it does not depend on the velocity of the parent particle. We demonstrate an application of this method by simulating a reconstruction of the Higgs boson mass in the H-> WW -> lnu lnu decay mode at the LHC. We show that systematic errors are suppressed compared to statistical errors. In the vector boson fusion channel, the statistical accuracy of the mass determination is estimated to be +12% and -14% at an integrated luminosity of 100fb^{-1}, assuming the Higgs boson mass to be 125GeV and root{s}=14TeV.

31 pages, 15 figures; Version to appear in JHEP