Precise Higgs Properties in the LHC Era

ended

"The observation of the Higgs boson at the LHC in 2012 was a defining moment for particle physics in the 21st century. As a result of this groundbreaking discovery, one of the top priorities of the European Strategy for Particle Physics is a programme to ""measure this particle’s properties with the highest possible precision"", in order to uncover the nature of electroweak symmetry breaking. The central role of the Higgs boson in this phenomenon, for which we have no dynamical explanation, means that many questions can be answered about physics beyond the Standard Model through the study of this particle at colliders. Effective Field Theory is the most general way in which departures from SM expectations are parametrised and forms a core part of the LHC physics programme. In this proposal, I develop a strategy to incorporate recent developments in higher order calculations for EFT into global fits to high energy collider data with a particular focus on, though not limited to, Higgs physics at the LHC. I investigate the incorporation of Quantum Chromo Dynamics corrections interfaced with parton shower and hadronisation along with the effects of renormalisation group mixing of the Wilson coefficients. I will deliver a software package for efficient translation between different EFT descriptions, providing both a connection to other high energy physics tools for EFT, a framework for the analysis and interpretation of the global fits and an implementation of operator mixing within this framework. These elements will combine to extract maximum information from existing collider data in terms of limits on EFT coefficients and their interpretations in the context of UV models, paving the way for the study of EFT at the LHC and future colliders."