S. Cooperstein

This note documents predictions for the inclusive production cross sections of the Standard Model Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider at a centre of mass energy of 13.6 TeV. The predictions here are based on simple extrapolations of previously documented predictions published in the CERN Yellow Report "Deciphering the Nature of the Higgs Sector". The predictions documented in this note should serve as a reference while a more complete and update-to-date derivation of cross section predictions is in progress.

Abstract Fifty thousand hybrid circuits of five different types will be manufactured for the Phase-2 Upgrade of the CMS Outer Tracker. These circuits must undergo a strict quality control process, composed of functional testing and visual inspection, before they can be assembled into modules. The hybrids will be functionally tested first at the manufacturing site. Afterwards, they will be visually inspected and functionally tested again at CERN or at collaborating institutes. Results from these processes will be stored in the CMS production database. This paper presents the software tools developed to carry out these tasks.

At the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC), the CMS experiment will need to operate at up to 200 interactions per 25 ns beam crossing time and with up to 4000 fb −1 of integrated luminosity. To achieve the physics goals the experiment needs to improve the tracking resolution and the ability to selectively trigger on specific physics events. The CMS tracker upgrade requires designing a new detector to cope with the HL-LHC conditions. The new Outer Tracker is based on two types of silicon modules (strip-strip and pixel-strip). Each module type has a few types of high-density interconnect hybrid circuits which house the front-end and auxiliary electronics. This paper introduces the technological choices for modules and hybrids and presents the quality inspection aspects of the first hybrid prototypes.

A search for a Standard Model Higgs boson decaying to b$\bar{\text{b}}$ produced in association with a W or Z boson is reported for the following channels: W(e$\nu$)H, W($\mu\nu$)H, W($\tau\nu$)H, Z($\mu\mu)$H, Z(ee)H, and Z($\nu\nu$)H. The search is performed on data samples corresponding to integrated luminosities of 5.1 $\text{fb}^{-1}$ at $\sqrt{s} = 7$ TeV and 18.9 $\text{fb}^{-1}$ at $\sqrt{s} = 8$ TeV, collected by the CMS experiement at the LHC. An excess of events is observed above the expected background with a local significance of 2.1 standard deviations for a Higgs boson with mass 125 GeV consistent with Standard Model expectations. The signal strength corresponding to this excess, relative to that of the Standard Model Higgs boson, was 0.89 $\pm$ 0.43.

A search for a Standard Model Higgs boson decaying to b b produced in association with a W or Z boson is reported for the following channels: W(eν)H, W(µν)H, W(τν)H, Z(µ µ)H, Z(ee)H, and Z(νν)H.The search is performed on data samples corresponding to integrated luminosities of 5.1 fb -1 at √ s = 7 TeV and 18.9 fb -1 at √ s = 8 TeV, collected by the CMS experiement at the LHC.An excess of events is observed above the expected background with a local significance of 2.1 standard deviations for a Higgs boson with mass 125 GeV consistent with Standard Model expectations.The signal strength corresponding to this excess, relative to that of the Standard Model Higgs boson, was 0.89 ± 0.43.

The study of the associated production of vector bosons and jets constitutes an excellent testbench to check numerous QCD predictions.The most recent measurements of total and differential cross sections of vector bosons produced in association with jets are presented.Differential distributions as function of a broad range of kinematical observables are measured and compared with theoretical predictions.Final states with a vector boson and jets can be also used to study electroweak-initiated processes, such as the vector boson fusion production of a Z or W boson that are accompanied by a pair of energetic jets with large invariant mass.The study of these processes enables quantitative assessment of the reliability of the generator predictions for vector boson fusion topologies as well as stringent constraints on anomalous triple gauge coupling effective field theory parameters.

The study of the associated production of vector bosons and jets constitutes an excellent testbench to check numerous QCD predictions. The most recent measurements of total and differential cross sections of vector bosons produced in association with jets are presented. Differential distributions as function of a broad range of kinematical observables are measured and compared with theoretical predictions. Final states with a vector boson and jets can be also used to study electroweak-initiated processes, such as the vector boson fusion production of a Z or W boson accompanied by a pair of energetic jets with large invariant mass. The study of these processes enables quantitative assessment of the reliability of the generator predictions for vector boson fusion topologies as well as stringent constraints on anomalous triple gauge coupling effective field theory parameters.

The observation of the Standard Model Higgs boson decay to a bottom quark-antiquark pair is presented. The primary contribution to this result is from processes in which the Higgs boson is produced in association with a W or Z boson. The latest measurement of these processes is described, using 41.3 \fb\ of proton-proton collision data at center-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV, collected by the CMS experiment in 2017. The significance of the observed excess in data over Standard Model backgrounds is 3.3 standard deviations. The result is combined with similar measurements performed by CMS on previous datasets, resulting in an observed significance of 5.6 standard deviations. The measured signal is well consistent with the Standard Model expectation for a Higgs boson with $m_{\text{H}} = 125$ GeV decaying to bottom quarks, with a precision of 20\%.