Data Analysis Strategy

This chapter provides a detailed summary of the analysis conducted for the search of \({\text{H} \rightarrow \text{inv.}} \) decays through Vector Boson Fusion (VBF) production mode, using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) proton-proton collision data from 2017 and 2018. The chapter starts with a detailed discussion of how physics objects that are used in the analysis are reconstructed from raw detector data. Following this, the complete set of weights applied to simulated events, including higher-order theoretical corrections and experimental corrections, are presented. This is followed by a discussion of several key data-quality issues encountered during data taking, and analysis strategies that are adopted to mitigate such issues. Finally, the chapter closes with an overview of how the events of interest are selected for analysis and categorized into different signal and control regions, and how a maximum likelihood fit is performed over all regions to data, in order to determine the best-fit signal yields.