Prospects for Observing an Invisibly Decaying Higgs Boson in $t\bar{t}H$ Production at the LHC

Abstract

In this thesis we study the prospects for observing the invisibly decaying Higgs boson in the associated $t\bar tH$ production at the LHC. The results of the Monte Carlo simulations of signal and background processes show that there is a possibility of observing the statistically significant number of signal events required for the discovery. Moreover, the analysis can be further improved to reduce the number of false reconstructions of the $W$ boson. The analysis of the $t \bar t H$ production is independent of the model in which the Higgs boson decays into the invisible channel. There are several possibilities for models where $H\to invisible$ can be of interest. For this thesis, we have studied the simplest supersymmetric model, called mSUGRA. The results of the scans of the mSUGRA model parameter space show that the regions, where the branching ratio of the lightest neutral Higgs boson to the lightest neutralino pair is high, are excluded by current experimental constraints. The $h \to b \bar b$ channel dominates, and the possibility for discovery in this c hannel will not be suppressed by the invisible decays. This result does not disqualify invisible channel as possible signature in other models. Chapter 4 of this thesis is based on the published paper: B.P. Kersevan, \underline{M. Malawski}, E. Richter-Was: {\em Prospects for observing an invisibly decaying Higgs boson in the $t\bar t H$ production at the LHC}, The European Physical Journal C - Particles and Fields, 2003, vol. 29, no. 4, pp. 541 - 548.Comment: Master of Science Thesi