General information
Organisation
The French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) is a key player in research, development and innovation in four main areas :
• defence and security,
• nuclear energy (fission and fusion),
• technological research for industry,
• fundamental research in the physical sciences and life sciences.
Drawing on its widely acknowledged expertise, and thanks to its 16000 technicians, engineers, researchers and staff, the CEA actively participates in collaborative projects with a large number of academic and industrial partners.
The CEA is established in ten centers spread throughout France
Reference
SL-DRF-26-0085
Direction
DRF
Thesis topic details
Category
Corpuscular physics and outer space
Thesis topics
Search for di-Higgs production in the multilepton channel with the ATLAS detector using 13.6 TeV data
Contract
Thèse
Job description
In the Standard Model (SM), the Higgs field is responsible for the breaking of the electroweak symmetry, thereby giving mass to the W and Z bosons. The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 at the LHC provided experimental confirmation of the existence of this field. Despite extensive studies, the self-coupling of the Higgs boson remains unmeasured, yet it is crucial for understanding the shape of the Higgs potential and the stability of the universe’s vacuum. Studying Higgs pair production (di-Higgs) is the only direct way to access this parameter, providing key insights into the electroweak phase transition after the Big Bang. Di-Higgs production is extremely rare (cross-section ~40 fb for proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13.6 TeV), and among its possible final states, the multilepton channel is promising due to its distinctive kinematics, though complex due to diverse topologies and backgrounds. Recent advances in artificial intelligence, particularly transformer-based architectures respecting physical symmetries, have recently significantly improved event reconstruction in complex Higgs channels such as HH?4b or HH?bbtt. Applying these techniques to the multilepton channel offers strong potential to enhance sensitivity. This PhD project will focus on searching for di-Higgs production in the multilepton final state with the full ATLAS Run 3 dataset at 13.6 TeV, leveraging the group’s ongoing ttH multilepton work to develop advanced AI-based reconstruction and analysis methods. The projet aims to approach SM sensitivity for the Higgs self-coupling.
University / doctoral school
PHENIICS (PHENIICS)
Paris-Saclay
Thesis topic location
Site
Saclay
Requester
Position start date
01/10/2026
Person to be contacted by the applicant
Saimpert Matthias
Matthias.Saimpert@cea.fr
CEA
DRF/IRFU
CEA-Saclay
Irfu/DPhP
91191 Gif-sur-Yvette CEDEX
Tutor / Responsible thesis director
DELIOT Frédéric
frederic.deliot@cern.ch
CEA
DRF/IRFU
CEA-Saclay
Irfu/DPhP
91191 Gif-sur-Yvette CEDEX
0169086424
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