Speaker
Description
"Searching for Higgs pair production and precisely measuring the Higgs self-coupling modifier $\kappa_\lambda$ are among the key milestones for the next stage of the LHC programme. In Ref.[1], we demonstrated that, in the HH→4b channel, a “jet-free” approach can achieve a surprisingly large >5× improvement in sensitivity, potentially bringing observation-level sensitivity to Higgs pair production within reach with the LHC Run 2+3 dataset. This gain arises from two key ingredients:a global analysis of all particles in an event without intermediate jet clustering, and the remarkable scaling behavior of modern AI models in this setting. We then systematically investigated the origin of this improvement, decomposing the transition from a fully jet-based to a fully particle-based analysis into five steps and demonstrating a cumulative improvement of ~50× in background rejection. We further extended the framework to all major HH decay channels to assess where and to what extent the jet-free approach can improve the overall sensitivity to Higgs pair production. Finally, we developed an analysis specifically optimized for $\kappa_\lambda$ to investigate whether this approach could bring observation-level sensitivity to the Higgs self-coupling within reach before the HL-LHC era.
In this talk, I will provide a comprehensive overview of our progress in developing the “jet-free” approach. Our previous studies and presentations can be found in theHiggs Pairs 2025 talk,ML4Jets 2026 talk, andHiggs 2026 talk.
