First Observation of the Production of Three Massive Vector Bosons and Search for Long-Lived Particles using Delayed Photons in pp Collisions at √s = 13 TeV

Citation

Zhang, Zhicai (2021) First Observation of the Production of Three Massive Vector Bosons and Search for Long-Lived Particles using Delayed Photons in pp Collisions at √s = 13 TeV. Dissertation (Ph.D.), California Institute of Technology. doi:10.7907/vnec-zj29. https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechTHESIS:01122021-051424539

Abstract

This thesis presents the first observation of the production of three massive vector bosons (VVV with V= W, Z) in proton-proton collisions at the LHC at √s = 13 TeV. The search was performed in final states with two same-sign charged leptons (electrons or muons) plus one or two jets, and three, four, five, or six leptons from WWW, WWZ, WZZ and ZZZ decays, with a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 137 fb^-1 collected by the CMS experiment during 2016-2018. The observed (expected) significance of the combined VVV production is 5.7 (5.9) standard deviations, and the production cross section is measured to be 1010⁺²¹⁰_-200(stat)⁺¹⁵⁰_-120(syst) fb, corresponding to a signal strength of 1.02^+0.26_-0.23. We also found evidence for WWW and for WWZ production, with observed significances of 3.3 and 3.4 standard deviations, respectively. The measured production cross sections for individual VVV processes are also reported. The establishment of VVV production opens a new program of many standard model studies (such as gauge-gauge and Higgs-gauge couplings), and provides a new tool for many new physics searches (such as anomalous gauge coupling searches, new resonance searches). This thesis also reports a search for long-lived supersymmetry particles decaying to photons in proton-proton collisions at the LHC at √s = 13 TeV, with a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 77.4fb^-1 collected by CMS during 2016-2017. Results are interpreted with a gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking model, where the long-lived particle is a neutralino and the lightest supersymmetry particle is a gravitino. For neutralino proper decay lengths of 0.1, 1, 10, and 100 m, masses up to 320, 525, 360, and 215 GeV are excluded at 95% confidence level, respectively. This result extends the limits from previous searches by one order of magnitude for the neutralino proper decay length and up to 100 GeV more for the neutralino mass. Motivated by the need for precision timing measurements for long-lived particle searches, as well as for improvements in general object reconstruction performance, the timing performance of two types of sensors are studied in this thesis: one with a Cerium doped Lutetium Yttrium Orthosilicate (LYSO:Ce) crystal as the scintillator and a silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) as the photodetector, another with a Cadmium-Telluride sensor as the active material for a sampling calorimeter. Both setups have been demonstrated with test beams to be able to provide timing measurements of particles with a resolution below 30 ps.

Thesis Files