Electroweak symmetry breaking is the central mechanism that governs the dynamics of Standard Model, a mathematical framework that describes the interaction among all known elementary particles. One of the major predictions of this model is that the interaction strength of elementary fermions with Higgs boson, termed as Yukawa interaction, is proportional to the fermion masses. This hypothesis has been experimentally verified for the heavier generation of fermions, e.g. top and bottom quarks. However, Yukawa coupling for charm and lighter quarks are yet to be measured.
This measurement is experimentally extremely challenging due to the difficulties of tagging a charm-jet as well as the presence of several unavoidable backgrounds in the individual search channels.
To probe the Higgs we use its associate production with a vecor Boson, Z or W (pp->VH->Vcc). The final states will be a pair of charm quarks with either 2 leptons, one lepton or zero lepton.
The Weizmann team has participated in the first round of the analysis and published preliminary limits [1].
We are now developing the zero leptons analysis. The work is done in collaboration with the experimental HEP group in TAU. The measurement is performed with the ATLAS detector at the Large hadron Collider , CERN.
The Weizmann team also plans to continue this work by contributing to future efforts in ATLAS.
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