Assist. Prof. Dr. Miha Muškinja (IJS, FMF): Searching for New Physics: Probing the Higgs-Charm Interaction with the ATLAS Experiment at the LHC
The discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2012 was a groundbreaking moment in particle physics, confirming the mechanism that gives mass to the heaviest particles, like the top and bottom quarks and tau lepton. However, for lighter particles such as the charm quark, this mass-generating process has not yet been verified. In this talk, I will discuss our efforts to measure the Higgs-Charm Yukawa coupling, a key interaction that could reveal new physics beyond the Standard Model. Although initially thought to be an impossible task, recent advancements in data analysis have made it possible to probe this interaction with much greater precision. I will share the latest results from the ATLAS experiment, which have improved our sensitivity to the Higgs-Charm coupling by a factor of three compared to previous searches. This progress is largely due to enhanced flavor tagging techniques for detecting charm and bottom quarks and the use of sophisticated machine learning algorithms to distinguish the Higgs signal from other background processes. Join me as we explore how these cutting-edge methods are bringing us closer to understanding the fundamental forces of nature.