Erlangen 2026 – scientific programme

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 77: Higgs Physics VIII

T 77.8: Talk

Thursday, March 19, 2026, 18:00–18:15, KH 02.013

Investigation on the use of multiclass BDTs in the search for the Higgs boson decay to a charm-anticharm pair in vector boson associated production mode at CMS in Run 3 — •Pedro Gouveia Pinto da Costa, Alexander Schmidt, Andrey Pozdnyakov, Valentyn Vaulin, Patrick Kersten, Ishmeet Kaur Vohra, Jan Terörde, and Arnd Meyer — III. Physikalisches Institut A, RWTH Aachen University

The most sensitive channel to search for the decay of the Higgs boson into charm quarks is the vector boson associated production mode (VH channel) in which the Higgs boson is produced along with a W or Z boson. Analyses targeting this channel use multiple different machine learning models to help distinguish between signal and background events. Among the main backgrounds are W/Z plus jet production and top quark pair production. Events are classified into several categories with different signal and background compositions to facilitate a multi-parameter fit. This talk presents a study in which the potential of a multiclass boosted decision tree (BDT) is investigated in comparison to the previously used binary classification.

Keywords: Higgs; Charm; VHcc; CMS; BDT