Ditau jets in Higgs searches

Understanding and identifying ditau jets---jets consisting of pairs of tau particles---can be of crucial importance and may even turn out to be a necessity if the Higgs boson decays dominantly to new light scalars which, on the other hand, decay to tau pairs. As often seen in various models beyond the standard model such as in the next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model, Higgs portals, etc., the lightness of these new states ensures their large transverse momenta and, as a consequence, the collinearity of their decay products. We show that the nonstandard signatures of these objects, which can easily be missed by standard analysis techniques, can be superbly exploited in an analysis based on subjet observables. When combined with additional selection strategies, this analysis can even facilitate an early discovery of the Higgs boson. To be specific, a light Higgs can be found with S/√B5 from L12 fb^-1 of data. We combine all these observables into a single discriminating likelihood that can be employed toward the construction of a realistic and standalone ditau tagger.