Search For Pair-Produced Resonances Decaying To Top Quarks And Jets In Proton-Proton Collisions At 8 Tev With The Cms Detector At The Lhc

Nicolas Kaufman, Gala

Search For Pair-Produced Resonances Decaying To Top Quarks And Jets In Proton-Proton Collisions At 8 Tev With The Cms Detector At The Lhc

Abstract

We present a search for pair production of new physics resonances decaying into a top quark and a light parton in final states with two leptons, interpreting the results in the context of an R-parity violating supersymmetric model. We use 19.5 fb[-]1 of data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC from proton√ proton collisions at s = 8 TeV in 2012. The experimental signature consists of two leptons (e or [MICRO SIGN]), two jets identified as originating from the decay of a b quark, and two jets identified as coming from light flavor quarks or gluons. We reconstruct and analyze potential resonant decays. The dominant standard model background is top quark pair production with additional jets from initialor final-state radiation. We perform an extended unbinned maximum likelihood fit to the transverse momenta of the two leading light jets and the reconstructed resonance mass. The observation is consistent with the standard model expectation, and we set upper limits on the signal cross section for R-parity violating bottom squarks with masses between 250 and 600 GeV. We exclude R-parity violating bottom squark pair production at the 95% confidence level between 250 GeV and 326 GeV.

Date Issued

2014-08-18

Committee Chair

Thom-Levy, Julia

Committee Member

Perelstein, Maxim
Gibbons, Lawrence K

Degree Discipline

Physics

Degree Name

Ph. D., Physics

Degree Level

Doctor of Philosophy

Types

dissertation or thesis