Discoveries far from the Lamppost with Matrix Elements and Ranking

The prevalence of null results in searches for new physics at the LHC motivates the effort to make these searches as model-independent as possible. We describe procedures for adapting the Matrix Element Method for situations where the signal hypothesis is not known a priori. We also present general...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inarXiv.org
Main Authors Debnath, Dipsikha, Gainer, James S, Matchev, Konstantin T
Format Paper Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Ithaca Cornell University Library, arXiv.org 22.05.2014
Subjects
Flattening
Histograms
Physics - High Energy Physics - Experiment
Physics - High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
Ranking
Searching
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Summary:The prevalence of null results in searches for new physics at the LHC motivates the effort to make these searches as model-independent as possible. We describe procedures for adapting the Matrix Element Method for situations where the signal hypothesis is not known a priori. We also present general and intuitive approaches for performing analyses and presenting results, which involve the flattening of background distributions using likelihood information. The first flattening method involves ranking events by background matrix element, the second involves quantile binning with respect to likelihood (and other) variables, and the third method involves reweighting histograms by the inverse of the background distribution.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1405.5879