Giacomo Bruno, Jérôme de Favereau, Christophe Delaere, Pavel Demin, Andrea Giammanco, Vincent Lemaitre, Fabio Maltoni, Olivier Mattelaer

The discovery of the 125GeV Higgs boson by the LHC experiments has finally opened a new era in the exploration of the TeV scale. The physics programs of CMS and ATLAS aim far beyond the simple discovery, and vigorously pursue the full characterization of the newly discovered state and the full exploration of the TeV scale in search of new phenomena. A key lesson drawn from first two years of LHC running is that most probably first discoveries and then identification of new states/interactions will not be easy. On the one hand, model-independent searches in simple topologies such as single/multi lepton at high transverse momenta have not shown any hint of new physics so far. On the other, topologies with jets and/or missing transverse energies, much more challenging experimentally, do strongly depend on the underlying theoretical models so that efficiently identifying signal enhanced regions of the phase space is quite involved. In this context, multi-variate techniques have become more and more central in the analysis of data from hadron collider experiments, to maximally exploit the information available on the signal and on the backgrounds. Amongst the most advanced techniques and certainly the most powerful one from the theoretical point of view, the so called matrix element method stands out. The main goal of this proposal is to advance the use and the scope of the matrix-element method so to significantly extend the range of physics applications at the LHC to the search of new physics. First we aim at providing the experimental HEP community with complete and automatic simulation tools, such as MadWeight/MoMEMta and Delphes, that overcome the technical limitations of the method. Second we propose to test and apply the new tools to current analyses in signatures that involve final state leptons and b-jets. Finally, we explore new and original applications of the method to both model-dependent or model-independent searches of new physics at the LHC.

External collaborators: CMS collaboration.

Christophe Delaere, Andrea Giammanco, Vincent Lemaitre

Search for Higgs boson(s) within the Standard Model and beyond and also withing a minimal extension of the scalar sector (2HDM).

The final state under study is a lepton pair associated with two b-jets and missing transverse energy. This topology is sensitive to a light SM Higgs via the H(bb)H(WW) production (via loop or Higgs self-coupling diagrams) and via the associated production of ttbar pairs and invisible particles. Requiring additional b jets (thus defining the llbbbb+MET final state) allows also the very interesting studies of a standard model Higgs produced in association with a top quark pair and It is also sensitive to the production of non standard heavy Higgs bosons decaying into ZA or WA, in the WAWA and ZAZA channels.

In particular, we are studying both resonant and non-resonant Higgs-pair production.

External collaborators: CMS collaboration.