Modification of Fox-Wolfram moments for hadron colliders

Abstract

Collisions of composite particles impose an arbitrary boost in the longitudinal direction on a given event. This implies that the centre-of-mass frame at hadron colliders is undetermined for processes with missing energy in the final state. This motivates the modification of the Fox-Wolfram moments such that the moments for a given event are identical when viewed in the lab or centre-of-mass frame of the beam. The resulting moments are invariant under rotations in the plane transverse to the beam and boosts parallel to the beam. These moments are then used to demonstrate improved signal separation in the channel where the Higgs decays to two b-quarks while being produced in association with a vector boson.