Studying the Higgs Potential at the e+e- Linear Collider

The determination of the shape of the Higgs potential is needed to complete the investigation of the Higgs profile and to obtain a direct experimental proof of the mechanism of electro-weak symmetry breaking. This can be achieved, at a linear collider, by determining the Higgs triple self-coupling g_HHH in the processes e+e--> HHZ and HHnunu and, possibly, the quartic coupling. This paper summarises the results of a study of the expected accuracies on the determination of g_HHH at a TeV-class LC and at a multi-TeV LC. The statistical dilution arising from contributions not sensitive to the triple Higgs vertex, can be reduced by means of variables sensitive to the kinematics and the spin properties of the reactions.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, to appear on the Proceedings of the APS / DPF / DPB Summer Study on the Future of Particle Physics (Snowmass 2001), Snowmass, Colorado, 30 Jun - 21 Jul 200

Selection of non-regular fractional factorial designs when some two-factor interactions are important

Introduction: Non-regular two-level fractional factorial designs, such as Placket-Burman designs, are becoming popular choices in many areas of scientific investigation due to their run size economy and flexibility. The run size of non-regular two-level factorial designs is a multiple of 4. They fill the gaps left by the regular two-level fractional factorial designs whose run size is always a power of 2 (4, 8, 16, 32, ...). In non-regular factorial designs each main effect is partially confounded with all the two-factor interactions not involving itself. Because of this complex aliasing structure, non-regular factorial designs had not received sufficient attention until recently. ... In practical applications of non-regular designs, it is often in the case that some of the two-factor interactions are important and need to be estimated in addition to the main effects. In this article, we consider how to select non-regular two-level fractional factorial designs when some of the two-factor interactions are presumably important. We propose and study a method to select the optimal non-regular two-level fractional factorial designs in the situation that some of the two-factor interactions are potentially important. We then discuss how to search for the best designs according to this method and present some results for the Plackett-Burman design of 12 runs.Includes bibliographical references

Optimal selection of blocked robust parameter designs and their applications

Blocking is a useful technique to control systematic variation in experiments. Robust parameter design is widely used as an effective tool to reduce process variability by appropriate selection of control factors to make the process insensitive to noise. In this paper, we propose and study a method for selecting the optimal blocked robust parameter designs when some of the control-by-noise interactions are included in the model. We then discuss how to search for the best designs according to this method and present some results for designs of 8 and 16 runs.Includes bibliographical references