Aniket Khanal Annual Review 2026
Student: Aniket Khanal Date: Feb 20th 2026 Members present: John Alison / Matteo Cremonesi / Manfred Paulini / Brian Batel Title of current research: Seach for Di-Higgs production in the bbWW final state
Summary of Progress Since last review:
Aniket has two ideas to improve the current HH->bbWW analysis. The first is to increase H->WW acceptance by going lower in jet transverse momentum. He argued in his slides why this is a wise strategy as it can nearly double signal acceptance, while providing a handle to suppress the leading ttbar background. His second idea for improving HH->bbWW is to develop data-driven corrections for the ttbar background. This again is a sensible thing to do as the current analysis requires the accurate modelling of the tails of the ttbar process to 1 part in a million. Data-driven corrections can provide confidence in the background model and flexibly adapt to any feature mismodelled by the simulation.
Summary of research plan and recommendations of the committee
Aniket's plan is to continue pursuing both improvement with the CMS and bbWW effort.
The committee was impressed by the clear presentation of his work and future plans. The committee notes that Aniket is making good progress and recommends he keep up the good work.
Expected graduation date: Fall 2028