Zhuoran Feng, promovenda aan het Nikhef, verdedigt haar proefschrift maandag 24 november 2025 om 12.30 aan de Radboud Universiteit.
“Through Beauty, Seeking Charm: A harmonised VH,H -> b¯b/c¯c analysis with the ATLAS detector”
The Standard Model of particle physics (SM) describes nature’s fundamental building blocks. It includes 12 fermions that constitute the matter, and 4 gauge bosons that mediate three out of the four fundamental forces. Central to this framework is the Brout-Englert-Higgs (BEH) mechanism, which explains how particles acquire mass through interactions with the Higgs field. The excitation of this field, the Higgs boson, was discovered in 2012 by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), confirming this key prediction.
Despite its successes, the SM leaves critical questions unanswered, such as the nature of dark matter, the origin of neutrino masses, and the three-generation-structure of the fermions. The Higgs boson offers a unique portal for probing such mysteries. Specifically, the SM predicts that charged fermions masses arise from their Yukawa couplings to the Higgs boson, with coupling strength proportional to mass. Measuring these couplings precisely is therefore crucial for testing the theory and searching for possible signs of new physics.
This thesis presents a unified analysis of Higgs decays into bottom and charm quark pairs. By studying these two decay modes together with harmonised strategies, this work enables direct comparison of their sensitivities and probes Yukawa couplings across different fermion generations simultaneously.
The upcoming High-Luminosity LHC project will provide unprecedented data volumes for precision tests of these couplings. The methods developed in this work will support future efforts to explore the properties of the Higgs boson in detail and to better understand how its interactions shape the world of fundamental particles.
De promotie vindt plaats in de Aula van de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, Comeniuslaan 2, Nijmegen.
Meer informatie en een link naar de livestream (klik Aula) op de website van de Radboud Universiteit.
Promotoren: prof. dr. N. de Groot en prof. dr. T. du Pree
Contact: Zhuoran Feng
