Stephane Brunet Cooperstein (Princeton) "Observation of Higgs Boson Decay to Bottom Quarks by the CMS Experiment"

Since the discovery of the Higgs boson six years ago, great progress has been made in measuring precisely its properties. These measurements have primarily been made via rare Higgs boson decays to two photons or two Z bosons due to their distinct experimental signatures. Although 60% of the Higgs bosons are predicted to decay to bottom quarks, it was not originally expected to observe this Higgs boson dominant decay mode until much later in the LHC program due to an overwhelming background of bottom quarks produced via strong interactions. This milestone observation was achieved this summer by both the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the LHC. This seminar presents the observation of the Higgs boson decay to bottom quarks by the CMS experiment, with an emphasis on the latest results using data collected in 2017. The observation was made possible by incorporating deep learning techniques and novel analysis methods. This constitutes the first observation of a Yukawa coupling to down-type quarks. Moreover, it demonstrates the feasibility of the first precision measurements of Higgs bosons in the VH production mode in the near future.