Lepton Assignment Problem for the Decay of Higgs to Z Bosons to Four Leptons

Within the past year, strong evidence has arisen suggesting the existence of the Higgs boson, a particle whose associated Higgs field is thought to provide mass to fundamental particles. The Higgs boson is experimentally produced at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) by colliding together two protons. In the decay channel that we study, the protons create a Higgs boson, which then decays into two Z bosons, each of which decays into two leptons; symbolically, pp -> H -> ZZ -> 4l. The analysis that attempts to discard unrelated background data depends upon correctly assigning the leptons to their associated Z bosons. This problem is known as the lepton assignment problem. We propose a solution involving the use of a discriminant function calculated with a Bayesian Neural Network that depends on five kinematically-derived input variables.