First look at boosted Z → bb̄ in Run-3 data

Large-radius jets originating from hadronic decays of highly Lorentz-boosted objects such as W, Z, or Higgs bosons provide a powerful tool for a variety of physics analyses. In this project, the performance of such boosted objects is investigated using the Z boson as a "standard candle", analyzing proton-proton collision data that were collected in 2022 at the record-high center-of-mass energy of 13.6 TeV. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 34.2 fb−1 . A sample of Z bosons decaying to a pair of b quarks is selected, and used for comparisons between simulated event samples and the recorded data. Highly Lorentz-boosted Higgs bosons decaying to bb̄ are reconstructed as single large-radius jets, and are identified using jet substructure and a dedicated b tagging technique based on a deep neural network.