Discipline: Physics
Subcategory: Physics (not Nanoscience)
Session: 3
Room: Exhibit Hall A
Hannah Nelson - North Park University
Co-Author(s): Ashutosh Kotwal, Duke University, Durham, NC; Katherine Pachal, Duke University, CERN, Switzerland
Background: If the Higgs Boson is made of new constituent particles, it is likely that the top quark is also made of similar particles based on how strongly they couple. In this case, events with four top quarks would be produced in excess of predictions from current theories. Purpose: Study top quark kinematics to determine how to distinguish between background and signal top decays based on top quark transverse momentum. Methods: Use MADGRAPH to generate Monte Carlo events where t and tbar decay to a bottom quark and a W boson, and the W bosons decay to qqbar. Results: Analysis shows that as the top quark’s transverse momentum increases, the distance between the top quark and its decays in the eta-phi space decreases, where eta is the pseudo-rapidity and phi is the azimuthal angle. Conclusions: This decrease in distance in the eta-phi space as top transverse momentum increases demonstrates that the two high momentum tops in a four top process can be tagged primarily by using position. Further research will involve doing a similar data analysis while including jets and the effect of the detector on the particles in a real experiment.
Funder Acknowledgement(s): The NSF REU program funded my research project, through Duke University.
Faculty Advisor: Ashutosh Kotwal, kotwal@phy.duke.edu
Role: I created that data set for the ttbar decay. Then, I did all of the data analysis with some assistance from my research advisor and a post-doctoral student. In addition to extracting data from the data set, I created graphs to analyze the data and visualize the findings.