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CMS-PAS-HIG-16-022
Search for associated production of Higgs bosons and top quarks in multilepton final states at $ \sqrt{s} = $ 13 TeV
Abstract: We present a search for the associated production of a standard model Higgs boson and a top quark-anti quark pair ($\mathrm{t}\overline{\mathrm{t}}\mathrm{H}$), using LHC pp collision data collected by the CMS experiment at a center of mass energy of $ \sqrt{s} = $ 13 TeV in 2016. The dataset corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 12.9 fb$^{-1}$. The analysis uses events with two leptons of the same charge or at least three charged leptons, produced together with b jets, targeting Higgs boson decay modes to $\mathrm{WW}^{*}$, $\mathrm{ZZ}^{*}$, and $\tau\tau$ and leptonic decays of at least one of the top quarks. The results are combined with the 2015 dataset and yield a $\mathrm{t}\overline{\mathrm{t}}\mathrm{H}$ signal strength of 2.0$^{+0.8} _{-0.7}$ times the standard model prediction. They are used to set a 95% confidence level upper limit on the signal production cross section of 3.4 times the standard model expectation, compared to an expected upper limit of 1.3$^{+0.6} _{-0.4}$ in the absence of a signal.
Figures & Tables Summary Additional Figures References CMS Publications
Figures

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Figure 1-a:
Possible Feynman diagrams for $ { {\mathrm {t}\overline {\mathrm {t}}} {\mathrm {H}} } $ production at pp colliders, where the Higgs boson decays to $ {\mathrm {W}} {\mathrm {W}}^{*}$, $ {\mathrm {Z}} {\mathrm {Z}} ^{*}$, and $ {\tau } {\tau }$ (from a to c). Subsequent WZ, and t decays are shown representing examples of final states with four leptons, three leptons, and two same-sign leptons, respectively.

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Figure 1-b:
Possible Feynman diagrams for $ { {\mathrm {t}\overline {\mathrm {t}}} {\mathrm {H}} } $ production at pp colliders, where the Higgs boson decays to $ {\mathrm {W}} {\mathrm {W}}^{*}$, $ {\mathrm {Z}} {\mathrm {Z}} ^{*}$, and $ {\tau } {\tau }$ (from a to c). Subsequent WZ, and t decays are shown representing examples of final states with four leptons, three leptons, and two same-sign leptons, respectively.

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Figure 1-c:
Possible Feynman diagrams for $ { {\mathrm {t}\overline {\mathrm {t}}} {\mathrm {H}} } $ production at pp colliders, where the Higgs boson decays to $ {\mathrm {W}} {\mathrm {W}}^{*}$, $ {\mathrm {Z}} {\mathrm {Z}} ^{*}$, and $ {\tau } {\tau }$ (from a to c). Subsequent WZ, and t decays are shown representing examples of final states with four leptons, three leptons, and two same-sign leptons, respectively.

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Figure 2-a:
Same-sign dilepton channel; a,b,c: flavor of the selected leptons, number of jets, number of jets passing the medium working point of the CSV tagger; d,e: distributions of the BDT classifier outputs. Distributions are shown before the signal extraction fit.

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Figure 2-b:
Same-sign dilepton channel; a,b,c: flavor of the selected leptons, number of jets, number of jets passing the medium working point of the CSV tagger; d,e: distributions of the BDT classifier outputs. Distributions are shown before the signal extraction fit.

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Figure 2-c:
Same-sign dilepton channel; a,b,c: flavor of the selected leptons, number of jets, number of jets passing the medium working point of the CSV tagger; d,e: distributions of the BDT classifier outputs. Distributions are shown before the signal extraction fit.

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Figure 2-d:
Same-sign dilepton channel; a,b,c: flavor of the selected leptons, number of jets, number of jets passing the medium working point of the CSV tagger; d,e: distributions of the BDT classifier outputs. Distributions are shown before the signal extraction fit.

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Figure 2-e:
Same-sign dilepton channel; a,b,c: flavor of the selected leptons, number of jets, number of jets passing the medium working point of the CSV tagger; d,e: distributions of the BDT classifier outputs. Distributions are shown before the signal extraction fit.

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Figure 3-a:
Number of selected jets and distributions of the BDT classifier outputs for the three-lepton channel. Distributions are shown before the signal extraction fit.

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Figure 3-b:
Number of selected jets and distributions of the BDT classifier outputs for the three-lepton channel. Distributions are shown before the signal extraction fit.

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Figure 3-c:
Number of selected jets and distributions of the BDT classifier outputs for the three-lepton channel. Distributions are shown before the signal extraction fit.

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Figure 4-a:
Combination of the BDT classifier outputs in the bins used for signal extraction, for the same-sign dilepton (a) and three-lepton (b) channels. Post-fit distributions and uncertainties are shown.

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Figure 4-b:
Combination of the BDT classifier outputs in the bins used for signal extraction, for the same-sign dilepton (a) and three-lepton (b) channels. Post-fit distributions and uncertainties are shown.
Tables

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Table 1:
Expected and observed yields after the selection in 2LSS and 3L final states. The rare SM backgrounds include $ {\mathrm {W}}^\pm {\mathrm {W}}^\pm {\mathrm {q}} {\mathrm {q}}'$, $ {\mathrm {W}} {\mathrm {W}}$ produced in double-parton interactions, and triboson production. Uncertainties are purely statistical. The backgrounds from non-prompt leptons and charge mis-measurements are extracted from data.

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Table 2:
Observed and expected asymptotic 95% CL upper limits on and best fit value of the signal strength parameter ($\mu $).
Summary
A search for the associated production of a standard model Higgs boson and a top quark-anti quark pair has been performed using pp collision data collected by the CMS experiment in 2016 at a center of mass energy of $ \sqrt{s} = $ 13 TeV, and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 12.9 fb$^{-1}$. The analysis targets Higgs boson decay modes to $\mathrm{WW}^{*}$, $\mathrm{ZZ}^{*}$, and $\tau\tau$ and leptonic decays of at least one of the top quarks. The 2016 dataset is combined with the smaller 2015 dataset at the same center of mass energy. We measure a signal strength of $\sigma/\sigma_{\mathrm{SM}} =$ 2.0$^{+0.8} _{-0.7}$ in the combined dataset, and set a 95% confidence level upper limit of $\sigma < 3.4 \times \sigma_{\mathrm{SM}}$ on the signal cross section, compared to an expected upper limit of 1.3$^{+0.6} _{-0.4}$ in absence of a signal.
Additional Figures

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Additional Figure 1-a:
Logarithm of matrix element weights for ${{\mathrm{ t } {}\mathrm{ \bar{t} } } \mathrm{ H } } $, ${{\mathrm{ t } {}\mathrm{ \bar{t} } } \mathrm{ W } } $, and ${{\mathrm{ t } {}\mathrm{ \bar{t} } } {\mathrm{ Z } } }$ after the three-lepton category selection.

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Additional Figure 1-b:
Logarithm of matrix element weights for ${{\mathrm{ t } {}\mathrm{ \bar{t} } } \mathrm{ H } } $, ${{\mathrm{ t } {}\mathrm{ \bar{t} } } \mathrm{ W } } $, and ${{\mathrm{ t } {}\mathrm{ \bar{t} } } {\mathrm{ Z } } }$ after the three-lepton category selection.

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Additional Figure 1-c:
Logarithm of matrix element weights for ${{\mathrm{ t } {}\mathrm{ \bar{t} } } \mathrm{ H } } $, ${{\mathrm{ t } {}\mathrm{ \bar{t} } } \mathrm{ W } } $, and ${{\mathrm{ t } {}\mathrm{ \bar{t} } } {\mathrm{ Z } } }$ after the three-lepton category selection.

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Additional Figure 2:
Impact plot for the five nuisances having the largest effect on the fitted signal strength.

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Additional Figure 3-a:
Normalized distributions of the BDT classifier outputs for the same-sign dilepton selection.

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Additional Figure 3-b:
Normalized distributions of the BDT classifier outputs for the same-sign dilepton selection.

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Additional Figure 4-a:
Post-fit yields in each category (a) and in each category-BDT bin (b) for the same-sign dilepton selection.

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Additional Figure 4-b:
Post-fit yields in each category (a) and in each category-BDT bin (b) for the same-sign dilepton selection.

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Additional Figure 5-a:
Post-fit yields in each category (a) and in each category-BDT bin (b) for the three-lepton selection.

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Additional Figure 5-b:
Post-fit yields in each category (a) and in each category-BDT bin (b) for the three-lepton selection.

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Additional Figure 6:
Negative log-likelihood as a function of the signal strength for the combined 2015+2016 result, as observed in the data and expected from simulation with a standard model signal. Dotted lines at 1.0 and 3.84 correspond to 68% and 95% confidence levels, respectively.

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Additional Figure 7-a:
Best fit signal strength for the 2016 analysis alone, in the dilepton and trilepton channels (a), and further split into flavor categories (b).

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Additional Figure 7-b:
Best fit signal strength for the 2016 analysis alone, in the dilepton and trilepton channels (a), and further split into flavor categories (b).

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Additional Figure 8-a:
Best fit signal strength for the combined 2015+2016 analysis, in the dilepton and trilepton channels (a), and further split into flavor categories (b).

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Additional Figure 8-b:
Best fit signal strength for the combined 2015+2016 analysis, in the dilepton and trilepton channels (a), and further split into flavor categories (b).

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Additional Figure 9-a:
Lepton MVA (BDT) score of the trailing lepton in dileptonic ${\mathrm{ t } {}\mathrm{ \bar{t} } } $ events for opposite sign pairs (a), i.e. enriched in prompt leptons, and for same-sign pairs (b), enriched in non-prompt leptons. The hatched area represents the uncertainty due to the limited sample sizes of simulated events. Leading leptons in the events are required to pass the ``tight'' selection, including an MVA score of greater than 0.75.

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Additional Figure 9-b:
Lepton MVA (BDT) score of the trailing lepton in dileptonic ${\mathrm{ t } {}\mathrm{ \bar{t} } } $ events for opposite sign pairs (a), i.e. enriched in prompt leptons, and for same-sign pairs (b), enriched in non-prompt leptons. The hatched area represents the uncertainty due to the limited sample sizes of simulated events. Leading leptons in the events are required to pass the ``tight'' selection, including an MVA score of greater than 0.75.
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