Search For Exotic Long Lived Particles Using Disappearing Tracks With The Cms Experiment In Proton Proton Collisions At S

Search for Exotic Long-lived Particles Using Disappearing Tracks with the CMS Experiment in Proton-proton Collisions at √s

Search for Long-lived Particles Using Delayed Photons in Proton-proton Collisions at 13 TeV with the CMS Detector

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.

Search for Disappearing Tracks in Proton-proton Collisions at [arrow]"

A search is presented for long-lived charged particles that decay within the CMS detector and produce the signature of a disappearing track. Disappearing tracks are identified as those with little or no associated calorimeter energy deposits and with missing hits in the outer layers of the tracker. The search uses proton-proton collision data recorded at [arrow]" = 8 TeV that corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 19.5 fb-1. The results of the search are interpreted in the context of the anomaly-mediated supersymmetry breaking (AMSB) model. The number of observed events is in agreement with the background expectation, and limits are set on the cross section of direct electroweak chargino production in terms of the chargino mass and mean proper lifetime. At 95% confidence level, AMSB models with a chargino mass less than 260 GeV, corresponding to a mean proper lifetime of 0.2 ns, are excluded.