Anatomy of the Higgs fits: a first guide to statistical treatments of the theoretical uncertainties

Understand

The studies of the Higgs boson couplings based on the recent and upcoming LHC data open up a new window on physics beyond the Standard Model.

• In this paper, we propose a statistical guide to the consistent treatment of the theoretical uncertainties entering the Higgs rate fits.
• Both the Bayesian and frequentist approaches are systematically analysed in a unified formalism.
• We present analytical expressions for the marginal likelihoods, useful to implement simultaneously the experimental and theoretical uncertainties.