Search for the Decay of the Higgs Boson to Charm Quarks with the ATLAS Experiment

Since the discovery of a boson - consistent with the Standard Model Higgs boson - in 2012 it has been observed in many of its predicted production and decay channels. Most recently the coupling of the Higgs boson to fermions has been established. However, so far mostly Higgs boson couplings to heavy $3^{\text{rd}}$ generation fermions have been probed. Thus not much is known about the couplings to lighter fermions, which could be subject to substantial modifications. A novel search that sets a direct limit on the Higgs boson coupling to charm quarks via the $H\to c\bar{c}$ decay is presented. The analysis uses $36.1~\text{fb}^{-1}$ of $13~\text{TeV}$ proton-proton collision data recorded with the ATLAS experiment. A projection for an assumed luminosity of $3000 ~\text{fb}^{-1}$ at $14~\text{TeV}$ is presented as well. The analysis strategy probing ZH production with the Z boson decay to muons or electrons as well as the usage of dedicated c-jet identification techniques is discussed.