Getting to Higgs

Calculating Higgs Mass
Remember Higgs and W can be produced together, and Higgs decays into 2 Bs which produce jets.

We have provided data from candidate Higgs events. All of these events look like they contain a W, but some do not. We ignore events that do not contain a W. We select events that contain a W and base our Higgs mass calculations on the jets from that data.

 

A

B

C

D

E

1

Run No.

Event No.
mtW
GeV/c2
mW
GeV/c2

W Mass Bins

2

57379

5379

82.218

 

 

3

57515

7040

66.91

 

 

To select events containing a W:

  1. Get the data.

  2. Find the mass for the Ws by applying the correction factor you got from the Z masses to the W transverse mass in column C. Enter the W mass in Column D.

  3. Sort the data on the W mass.

  4. Use your judgment to decide which of these events produced a W. You could:
    • Check the value in the Particle Data Book.
    • Eyeball the data.
    • Plot a histogram of W mass. You can put the bins in column E.
    We won't know how good your judgment is until you look at the Higgs mass plot in Step 8. So you may have to come back here and revise this decision. Physicists call this cutting the data.

  5. Study this cut of the data by copying the rows containing the W events you chose and pasting them onto the sheet called Cut Data 1. You will work with this sheet now.

    Help with data analysis

Higgs Mass Plot »