Search For Long Lived Particles That Decay Into Final States Containing Two Electrons Or Two Muons In Proton Proton Collisions At Sqrts

A search is performed for long-lived particles that decay into final states that include a pair of electrons or a pair of muons. The experimental signature is a distinctive topology consisting of a pair of charged leptons originating from a displaced secondary vertex. Events corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.6 (20.5) fb-1 in the electron (muon) channel were collected with the CMS detector at the CERN LHC in proton-proton collisions at √s=8 TeV. No significant excess is observed above standard model expectations. Upper limits on the product of the cross section and branching fraction of such a signal are presented as a function of the long-lived particle's mean proper decay length. The limits are presented in an approximately model-independent way, allowing them to be applied to a wide class of models yielding the above topology. Over much of the investigated parameter space, the limits obtained are the most stringent to date. In the specific case of a model in which a Higgs boson in the mass range 125-1000 GeV/c2 decays into a pair of long-lived neutral bosons in the mass range 20-350 GeV/c2, each of which can then decay to dileptons, the upper limits obtained are typically in the range 0.2-10 fb for mean proper decay lengths of the long-lived particles in the range 0.01-100 cm. In the case of the lowest Higgs mass considered (125 GeV/c2), the limits are in the range 2-50 fb. As a result, these limits are sensitive to Higgs boson branching fractions as low as 10-4.

A search is presented for new long-lived particles that propagate a measurable distance through the CMS detector before decaying to leptons. The search is performed in 113–118 fb-1 of proton-proton collision data produced by the CERN LHC at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV and collected by the CMS detector in 2016, 2017, and 2018. Events are selected with two leptons (an electron and a muon, two electrons, or two muons) that both have transverse impact parameter values between 0.01 and 10 cm. Using transverse impact parameter as the discriminating variable allows for sensitivity to displaced decays without requiring that the leptons form a common vertex. The search is designed to be sensitive to a wide range of new physics models that produce displaced di-lepton final states. The observation is consistent with the background-only hypothesis, and limits are set on the product of the cross-section of top squark pair production and the branching fraction to a lepton and a b or d quark through an R-parity-violating vertex. For a proper decay length hypothesis of 2 cm, top squarks with masses up 1500 GeV are excluded at the 95% confidence level.

In this dissertation, I present the searches looking for decays of stopped massive long-lived exotic particles, which are pair produced in the proton-proton collisions at 13 TeV and come to rest afterwards in the CMS detector at the CERN LHC. The decays are most likely to be observed when there are no collisions. Two specific decay scenarios are studied: a long-lived particle (LLP) decaying hadronically or semi- leptonically in the calorimeter, and a LLP decaying semi-leptonically or leptonically to a pair of muons in the muon detector. The calorimeter-based search is performed using 2.7 fb-1 of 13 TeV collision run data collected in 2015 and 35.9 fb-1 of 13 TeV collision run data collected in 2016, corresponding to a total trigger livetime of 721 hours. The muon search is performed using 2.8 fb-1 of 13 TeV collision run data collected in 2015 and 36.2 fb-1 of 13 TeV collision run data collected in 2016, corresponding to a total trigger livetime of 744 hours. Search results are interpreted in a couple of simplified models. The limits on the production cross sections and masses of LLPs are calculated as a function of particle lifetimes, which vary from 100 ns to 10 days, assuming the corresponding decaying branching fractions to be 100%. The results are the most stringent ones on the stopped LLPs so far.

A search has been performed for long-lived particles that could have come to rest within the CMS detector, using the time intervals between LHC beam crossings. The existence of such particles could be deduced from observation of their decays via energy deposits in the CMS calorimeter appearing at times that are well separated from any proton-proton collisions. Using a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 18.6 fb-1 of 8 TeV proton-proton collisions, and a search interval corresponding to 281 h of trigger livetime, 10 events are observed, with a background prediction of 13.2+3.6 -2.5 events. Limits are presented at 95 % confidence level on gluino and top squark production, for over 13 orders of magnitude in the mean proper lifetime of the stopped particle. Assuming a cloud model of R-hadron interactions, a gluino with mass ≤1000 GeV and a top squark with mass ≤525 GeV are excluded, for lifetimes between 1 μs and 1000 s. Finally, these results are the most stringent constraints on stopped particles to date.

This dissertation presents a search for long-lived particles using delayed photons in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 13 TeV recorded by the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider in 2017, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 41.5 fb^-1. This analysis includes a number of unique components that will be discussed: a dedicated signal trigger, out-of-time photon reconstruction and identification, and a detector time resolution measurement. The results of this search include the combination of a related analysis using data collected in 2016 also at sqrt(s) = 13 TeV, corresponding to a combined integrated luminosity of 77.4 fb^-1. The combined results are interpreted in the context of supersymmetry with gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking, where the neutralino is long-lived and decays to a photon and a gravitino. Limits are presented as a function of the neutralino proper decay length and mass. For neutralino proper decay lengths of 10^1, 10^2, 10^3, and 10^4 cm, masses up to 320, 525, 360, and 215 GeV are excluded at 95% confidence level, respectively. Additionally, a discussion on a high-performance computing upgrade to CMS, known as mkFit, will be presented. mkFit is an on-going effort to exploit highly parallel computer architectures in vectorizing and parallelizing combinatorial Kalman filter charged particle track reconstruction algorithms. The current physics and computational performance of this project will be discussed.

A search for the decay of neutral, weakly interacting, long-lived particles using data collected by the ATLAS detector at the LHC is presented. This analysis uses the full data set recorded in 2012: 20.3 fb-1 of proton-proton collision data at [arrow]" = 8 TeV. The search employs techniques for reconstructing decay vertices of long-lived particles decaying to jets in the inner tracking detector and muon spectrometer. Signal events require at least two reconstructed vertices. No significant excess of events over the expected background is found, and limits as a function of proper lifetime are reported for the decay of the Higgs boson and other scalar bosons to long-lived particles and for Hidden Valley Z' and Stealth SUSY benchmark models. The first search results for displaced decays in Z' and Stealth SUSY models are presented. The upper bounds of the excluded proper lifetimes are the most stringent to date.

A search is performed for long-lived massive neutral particles decaying to quark-antiquark pairs. The experimental signature is a distinctive topology of a pair of jets, originating at a secondary vertex. Events were collected with the CMS detector at the CERN LHC in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV. The data analyzed correspond to an integrated luminosity of 18.5 fb–1. No significant excess is observed above standard model expectations. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set on the production cross section of a heavy neutral scalar particle, H, in the mass range of 200 to 1000 GeV, decaying promptly into a pair of long-lived neutral X particles in the mass range of 50 to 350 GeV, each in turn decaying into a quark-antiquark pair. For X with mean proper decay lengths of 0.4 to 200 cm, the upper limits are typically 0.5–200 fb. The results are also interpreted in the context of an R-parity-violating supersymmetric model with long-lived neutralinos decaying into a quark-antiquark pair and a muon. For pair production of squarks that promptly decay to neutralinos with mean proper decay lengths of 2–40 cm, the upper limits on the cross section are typically 0.5–3 fb. As a result, the above limits are the most stringent on these channels to date.

A search for the decay of a light Higgs boson to a pair of weakly-interacting, long-lived particles in 20.8 fb-1 of proton-proton collisions at [square root of] s = 8 TeV recorded in 2012 by the ATLAS detector is presented. The strategy requires that both of the long-lived particles decay just before or inside the hadronic calorimeter. No statistically significant excess of events is observed above the expected background and limits on the Higgs boson production and branching ratio to weakly-interacting, long-lived particles are derived as a function of the particle's proper decay length.

Many extensions of the Standard Model posit the existence of heavy particles with long lifetimes. This article presents the results of a search for events containing at least one long-lived particle that decays at a significant distance from its production point into two leptons or into five or more charged particles. In this study, this analysis uses a data sample of proton-proton collisions at \(\sqrt{s} = 8\) TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb−1 collected in 2012 by the ATLAS detector operating at the Large Hadron Collider. No events are observed in any of the signal regions, and limits are set on model parameters within supersymmetric scenarios involving R-parity violation, split supersymmetry, and gauge mediation. In some of the search channels, the trigger and search strategy are based only on the decay products of individual long-lived particles, irrespective of the rest of the event. In these cases, the provided limits can easily be reinterpreted in different scenarios.