Search for Boosted VH Production with Higgs Boson Decays to Flavored Quarks in the All-Hadronic Final State using CMS Run 3 Data

The production of a Higgs boson in association with a W or Z boson (VH) is a crucial process for testing the Standard Model at high energy scales. We present a search for boosted VH production where the Higgs boson decays to a bottom- or charm-quark pair and the vector boson decays hadronically. The search uses proton-proton collision data collected by the CMS detector during LHC Run 3. This final state is exceptionally challenging due to immense backgrounds from multijet production. To distinguish signal events, this analysis deploys a novel jet tagger based on the ParticleTransformer architecture. This algorithm uses an attention mechanism to provide a significant advantage in identification performance over previous taggers. The dominant background is estimated using a data-driven transfer factor method. This talk will present the analysis strategy, the performance of the new tagger, and the current status of the search.