The STXS includes ggH, VBF, VH (including gg->ZH), ttH, bbH, tqH (see yellow report), with various sub-bins. While this analysis is clearly targeted to ggH, VBF, VH(hadronic), all other production modes need to be included or shown to have zero contribution. When contribution is not zero, overlap with other dedicated analyses should also be addressed. When you run the fit, it should be clear what is done with each component, if it is floated as signal or background, or fixed. More on this below.
You can find the information on what production modes are considered for the fit and how already in PAS v2 L530-535. We will check whether the information given there is complete and clear enough for everybody to understand what is being done and update the PAS if considered necessary in further versions during the ARC review .
What I see in Tables 2 and 3 (in AN) with MC samples, there are still missing gg->ZH, bbH, tqH MC samples.
As you know there are no official samples available for gg->ZH, bbH nor tqH. The (non-)importance of these production modes for the current analysis has already been studied in detail on privately produced samples or using MSSM bbH Monte Carlo, as a prerequisite to the official pre-approval by the Higgs PAG conveners. As a reminder you can find the discussion posted to the HN here: link
. For your convenience we summarize the results of the studies that have been made: i) the effect of gg->ZH is 1,6% of the combination of VBF with all ZH production modes (excluding gg->ZH), with no significant dependency on the stxs stage-1 bins, when compared to the expected sensitivity of the analysis in each corresponding bin; the cross sections of the corresponding production modes have been scaled up inclusively by 1.6%. ii) the effect of bbH is at most 1% of the ggH production cross section (with an expected uncertainty on mu_ggH of 0.2) w/o dependency on the stxs stage-1 bins. The ggH cross section has been scaled up inclusively by 1%.
The production cross section of tqH is roughly one order of magnitude below the ttH production cross (see link). The expectation off ttH events after the baseline selection of the analysis is ≤1 event in basically all event categories. Explicit numbers for the signal categories in the mt channel are ggH: 0.000 (0.003) and qqH: 1.05 (0.99) in 2016 (2017). Note that these are absolute event numbers. The tqH production mode has been neglected for the current analysis. A corresponding clarification has been added to the captions of Tables 2 and 3 and in the text in AN v11. For the legacy paper the importance of these samples for the analysis in the tautau final state will be re-discussed within the HTT subgroup.
I expected to see a table of the relevant contribution of various STXS-1 input modes contributing to different categories adopted in analysis. Just to give you an example from the HZZ pre-approval today, look at slide 23 in [1]. You promised to show explicit numbers for ttH and other such contributions, when we talked on Wednesday.
We will add such a table to the AN and, if considered interesting during the ARC review, also to the PAS.. Maybe with less granularity than presented in the example that you are pointing to, since we see most of the entries empty or plain zero. (What is the difference between empty and plain zero, by the way?). For the expected ttH event yield, see our answer to one of your previous questions.
In the PAS, I see tables 5 and 6, but they are completely empty (why?), and even when those numbers are filled, this would be only partial information. I understand that there is limited space in the PAS, but AN has no such restriction.
These tables have been filled with numbers (after unblinding) in PAS (v3). For completeness the same tables have also been added to AN (v11). Note that tables 5 and 6 in the PAS refer to the 2016 dataset, while the numbers for the 2017 dataset are given in tables 9 and 10. Let us know what you still need as a more complete information for the public. For CMS internal review or more specific questions you are invited to check the complete statistical model that has been uploaded to the corresponding HCG repository (link
).
The main result is the fit of mu(qqH) vs mu(ggH), as well as the combined mu. However, from the documentation (Results section in the PAS for example) it is absolutely not clear what is signal, what is background, and what is fixed for H(125). At the HTT meeting you said (please correct me if I am wrong) that ttH is fixed to SM, V(leptonic)H is treated as background, and V(hadronic)H is merged with VBF into the qqH signal. Even if there is not much of a practical difference due to the dominant contribution of ggH and VBF, this needs to be done in a clean way:
(1) spell everything out in the documentation
We appreciate your comment and agree that this should be done in a cleaner way in the documentation. We have added the corresponding clarifications in PAS (v3 L707-716) and AN (v11) (Sections 2 and 12).
(2) when we quote 4.7 sigma H->TT signal, all H(125) contributions should be treated as signal, such as ttH, bbH, tqH, V(leptonic+hadronic)H, VBF, ggH.
The result is the same. A corresponding sentence has been added to PAS (v3 L707-716).
(3) when a 2D scan of mu(qqH) vs mu(ggH) is done, it makes sense to merge all HVV-initiated processes (VBF+VH) into mu_HVV (or mu_V) and all fermion-initiated processes (ggH, bbH, ttH, tqH) into mu_Hff (or mu_f). Can you move to this presentation of results instead of the current Fig.7 content?
This is already what we do, as is stated from the caption of Fig. 7. The axis labels have been changed to make it clear to everybody also from the plot itself (w/o caption) what is being done.
In the HTT report on Wednesday, you had a nice split of fit results between 2016 and 2017, and we discussed that you would approach compatibility comparison with the previous published results on the 2016 dataset.
I do not find any discussion of comparison on the 2016 dataset. To make the proper comparison, one would have to estimate overlap between the two analyses (both in terms of events and in terms of the likelihood fit). This is close to impossible in a practical way (otherwise you would have to run a lot of toy MC with both analyses at the same time). However, it is possible to compare under the two extreme models with 0% and 100% overlap just to see the bounds, and you can also estimate the event overlap in the signal region with the same selection, to get another bound on overlap. However, it is a must to compare to the previous published result in some practical way.
A study of the compatibility between the results of HIG-16-043 and HIG-18-032, including a feasible check of the event overlap is in preparation and will be provided for discussion, soon.
The reported signal is 4.7 sigma. At the HTT meeting you promised to provide plots which should show this unambiguous signal in several ways. There are many plots in AN and PAS, but I do not think you have provided the plots which you promised on Wednesday. I also do not think any of the existing plots illustrate the re-discovered signal with ~5 sigma.
As discussed repeatedly and in many places, such plots will be prepared on the way to approval. We understand that you are eager to see such plots. But we stick to a given order with our work, starting with important items (e.g. related to data understanding) up to presentation items. We think that organizing our work this way makes more sense. As soon as we converge with the ARC on the plots, we will provide them for further discussion to the whole collaboration.