MadMax, or Where Boosted Significances Come From

Abstract: In an era of increasingly advanced experimental analysis techniques it is crucial to understand which phase space regions contribute a signal extraction from backgrounds. Based on the Neyman-Pearson lemma we compute the maximum significance for a signal extraction as an integral over phase space regions. We then study to what degree boosted Higgs strategies benefit ZH and ttH searches and which transverse momenta of the Higgs are most promising. We find that Higgs and top taggers are the appropriate tools, but would profit from a targeted optimization towards smaller transverse momenta. MadMax is available as an add-on to Madgraph5.