Dilepton mass spectrum interference: beyond the bump-hunt

Members: Andy B, Tetiana H, David Y, Bill M, Richard R, Yang Bai, Louie C

The rivet and contur implementation of this is discussed on this page.

Idea is to investigate whether interference “dips” in mll can be used to enhance limits above bump hunting, using the Rivet implementation of the ATLAS 13 TeV mll spectrum + resolution smearing.

Study dependence on resonance/interference width, play-off against measurement systematics, and propose recommendations on experimental data reporting to allow interference-aware interpretations in future.

Tasks:

• Richard & Yang: discuss models interesting for interference features
• Andy: implement fit-function normalisation, and re-fit to find correlations
• ALL: try model via MG5 with SM Drell-Yan interference; stats in Contur or standalone; ignore systematics (other than resolution smearing) for now