English

A mass reconstruction technique for a heavy resonance decaying to $\tau^+\tau^-$

High Energy Physics - Experiment 2016-08-09 v3 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

For a resonance decaying to τ+τ\tau^+\tau^-, it is difficult to reconstruct its mass accurately because of the presence of neutrinos in the decay products of the τ\tau leptons. If the resonance is heavy enough, we show that its mass can be well determined by the momentum component of the τ\tau decay products perpendicular to the velocity of the τ\tau lepton, pp_{\perp}, and the mass of the visible/invisible decay products, mvis/invm_{vis/inv}, for τ\tau decaying to hadrons/leptons. By sampling all kinematically allowed values of pp_{\perp} and mvis/invm_{vis/inv} according to their joint probability distributions determined by the MC simulations, the mass of the mother resonance is assumed to lie at the position with the maximal probability. Since pp_{\perp} and mvis/invm_{vis/inv} are invariant under the boost in the τ\tau lepton direction, the joint probability distributions are independent upon τ\tau's origin. Thus this technique is able to determine the mass of an unknown resonance with no efficiency loss. It is tested using the MC simulations of the physics processes ppZ/h(125)/h(750)+Xττ+X pp \to Z/h(125)/h(750)+X\to \tau\tau+X at 13~TeV. The ratio of the full width at half maximum and the peak value of the reconstructed mass distribution is found to be 20\%-40\% using the information of missing transverse energy.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1601.02454,
  title  = {A mass reconstruction technique for a heavy resonance decaying to $\tau^+\tau^-$},
  author = {Li-Gang Xia},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1601.02454},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

revised, references added, accepted for publication in Chinese Physics C