Transforming flavor tagging and its application to Higgs to charm measurements at the ATLAS experiment

Modern particle physics mostly concerns itself with the extension and precision measurement of the Standard Model. The Higgs boson, which was discovered in 2012 by the ATLAS and CMS experiments, represents the newest component of this theory. It couples to fermions through the Yukawa interaction of the Higgs mechanism. Some Yukawa couplings, such as that between the Higgs boson and bottom quark, have been studied thoroughly over the past 14 years and show good agreement with theoretical predictions. Others are far less explored, requiring large quantities of data and precise reconstruction strategies to isolate them. Among these, the Higgs to charm quark coupling represents the next frontier of precision Higgs measurements that could offer hints towards other open questions beyond the Standard Model, such as the fermion mass hierarchy and potential modifications to the Higgs mechanism that generate neutrino masses.