Search for Higgs Bosons Produced via Vector Boson Fusion and Decaying to a Pair of $b$-quarks in Association with a High-Energy Photon in the ATLAS Detector at the Large Hadron Collider
Abstract
A search for the Standard Model Higgs boson produced in association with a high-energy photon is performed using 132 fb$^{-1}$ of $pp$ collision data at $\sqrt{s}={13}$ TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. This dissertation presents a complete analysis of the vector boson fusion production mode of the Higgs boson, which is a particularly powerful channel for studying the $H(\rightarrow b\bar{b})+ \gamma$ final state because the photon requirement greatly reduces the multijet background and because the Higgs boson decays primarily to bottom quark-antiquark pairs. Extending and updating background Monte Carlo samples, training a neural network to distinguish between signal and background events, and optimizing binned-liklihood signal and background model fitting techniques are new strategies used in this analysis.