Title: 
Associated top-Higgs production with the matrix element method

Speaker: 
Dr. Lorenzo Bianchini, ETH Zürich

Abstract: 
Following the discovery of a new boson with mass around 125 GeV by
the ATLAS and CMS Collaborations at the LHC, the measurement of
its properties has become an important task in particle physics. While
the data collected so far indicate overall consistency with
the expectation for the SM Higgs boson, not all possible observables
have been measured with sufficient precision
yet. In particular, a direct evidence of the Higgs boson coupling to
up-type quarks, in particular to top quarks, is still missing. I
will review the recent developments on the measurement
of the ttH coupling strength at the LHC, with a focus on the Higgs
decay channel into a bottom quark-antiquark
pair. Recently, the CMS Collaboration has made public a search for ttH,
H->bb events based on data collected at 8 TeV center-of-mass energy,
where a matrix element method (MEM) is used for optimal signal/
background separation. After reviewing the application of the
MEM in collider experiments, I will describe in detail the CM
analysis, discussing its results and future perspectives.