Huilin Qu (UCSB) “Search for the Higgs Boson Decaying to Charm Quarks with the CMS Experiment”

After the discovery of the Higgs boson at the LHC, thoroughly studying the properties of the Higgs boson has become one of the top priorities of the LHC physics program. Measurement of the decay of the Higgs boson to charm quarks provides a direct probe of the Higgs coupling to second-generation quarks, therefore it is crucial for understanding the structure of Yukawa couplings. However, such a measurement is extremely challenging at the LHC due to large backgrounds. Recently, a search for the Higgs boson decaying to charm quarks has been performed in the CMS experiment. Novel approaches and advanced machine learning-based techniques for the Higgs boson reconstruction and charm quark identification are adopted in this analysis, leading to significantly improved results compared to previous experimental searches.