No abstract

Study of the production of pairs of top quarks in association with a Higgs boson is one of the primary goals of the Large Hadron Collider over the next decade, as measurements of this process may help us to understand whether the uniquely large mass of the top quark plays a special role in electroweak symmetry breaking. Higgs bosons decay predominantly to bb, yielding signatures for the signal that are similar to tt + jets with heavy flavor. Though particularly challenging to study due to the similar kinematics between signal and background events, such final states (ttbb) are an important channel for studying the top quark Yukawa coupling. This paper presents a systematic study of machine learning (ML) methods for detecting tth in the h → bb decay channel. Among the eight ML methods tested, we show that two models, extreme gradient boosted trees and neural network models, outperform alternative methods. We further study the effectiveness of ML algorithms by investigating the impact of feature set and data size, as well as the structure of the models. While extended feature set and larger training sets expectedly lead to improvement of performance, shallow models deliver comparable or better performance than their deeper counterparts. Our study suggests that ensembles of trees and neurons, not necessarily deep, work effectively for the problem of tth detection.

The unpolarized and polarized Beam Charge Asymmetries (BCAs) of the e ± p → e ± pγ process off unpolarized hydrogen are discussed. The measurement of BCAs with the CLAS12 spectrometer at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, using polarized positron and electron beams at 10.6 GeV is investigated. This experimental configuration allows to measure azimuthal and tdependences of the unpolarized and polarized BCAs over a large (x B , Q 2 ) phase space, providing a direct access to the real part of the Compton Form Factor (CFF) H.

The origin of the nearly circular Colônia structure, located at the southwestern edge of the city of São Paulo, Brazil, has been the subject of a long‐standing debate, ever since the 1960s when the structure was first investigated by geophysical methods. The structure still raises interest for geological research, as its sedimentary infill holds important paleoclimatic information about the evolution of the tropical rainforest, as well as the interplay between the South American summer monsoon, the Intertropical Convergence Zone, and the southern Westerly wind belt—for possibly as long as several million years. In addition, the search for evidence to conclusively establish the origin of this structure continues, and the answer most likely lies in the lower portions of the basin's sedimentary infill, which also holds a significant potential for underground water resources. Here, we present the results from recent seismic (reflection and HVSR), gravimetric, and geoelectrical surveys. They have provided a reliable image of the sedimentary infill, and the maximum depth to basement within the structure has been constrained consistently by the different methods to approximately −400 m. The geophysical data have also allowed to map the lateral contact between the crystalline basement rocks and the sedimentary infill, which indicates a diameter of approximately 2.8 km for the sedimentary basin, with 3.6 km being the diameter of the outermost limit of the structure. A total of six seismic stratigraphic boundaries were identified within the sedimentary infill, providing a framework for the planning of a deep drilling campaign and subsequent sampling program aimed at geological and paleoclimatology studies.

A B S T R A C TThe Catalão I alkaline-carbonatite complex, which is located in Central Brazil, is one of the main producers of niobium and phosphates in the world. It has been intensely studied geologically and geochemically for its economic potential. This work presents a geophysical analysis over this complex, identifying its behaviour in the subsurface and in portions that have not been explored yet. Different geophysical methods and techniques were applied to achieve the most reliable results possible: at the surface, through radiometric, geological, and topographic data, and at depth, by geological, magnetic, and gravimetric data. The analysis was successfully completed with inversions of gravity and magnetic data that resulted in quite similar models, both in volume and shape. Their density and magnetic susceptibility contrasts were consistent with the expected dunite-pyroxenite lithology from the original mafic intrusion and indicated (by exclusion) the volume of the carbonatite body, which along with the known contents of phosphates and niobium allowed an indirect estimate of the reserves and resources of the complex.