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Evidence for a Higgs boson in tau decays with the CMS detector

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Physics, 2014. / 120 / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 175-185). / In this thesis, I describe the search for a Higgs boson through its decay to a pair of tan leptons with the tau-pair subsequently decaying to ail electron, a muon, and neutrinos. The search is performed using data collected from proton-proton collisions by the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, corresponding to 5.0 fb-1 of integrated luminosity recorded at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and 19.7 fb-1 at 8 TeV. The expected significance for a Standard Model Higgs boson signal with a mass of 125 GeV is at the level of 1.2 standard deviations for the electron muon tau-pair decay mode. A mild excess of events is seen above the SM background expectation in this decay mode, consistent with a SM Higgs boson of mass 125 GeV. In combination with results using other tau-pair decay modes, an excess of events above the background expectation is seen at the level of 3.4 standard deviations. This constitutes the first evidence for a Higgs boson to decay to leptons. This thesis also describes an analysis of the data in the context of physics beyond the Standard Model, particularly in the framework of its Minimal Supersymnnetric extension. / by Valentina Dutta. / Ph. D.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:MIT/oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/91392
Date January 2014
CreatorsDutta, Valentina
ContributorsMarkus Klute., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics.
PublisherMassachusetts Institute of Technology
Source SetsM.I.T. Theses and Dissertation
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
Format185 pages, application/pdf
RightsM.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission., http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

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