A Novel Statistical Procedure Towards the Discovery of the Higgs Boson

Abstract

For years, physicists hypothesized the existence of the Higgs Boson; a fundamental particle in the standard model of physics playing a crucial role in the understanding of the electroweak force. However, it took almost 50 years of technological advancements until its discovery was empirically announced in 2012 [6]. The discovery was statistical in nature and relied on analyzing huge amounts of data provided by the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) at CERN. In this thesis, we propose a novel hypothesis testing approach leading to the rejection of the null hypothesis that the Higgs Boson doesn’t exist. We use real data recorded at the LHC, provide theoretical build, and back it with implementation/experimentaion. Finally, we contrast our approach with the one used in the Higgs ML Challenge [3].