1. Particle Physics Seminar

    "Cross section measurements and new physics searches with WZ vector boson scattering events at CMS"

    Presented by Kenneth Long, University of Wisconsin - Madison

    Thursday, January 10, 2019, 3 pm
    Small Seminar Room, Bldg. 510

    Hosted by: Alessandro Tricolli

    As the standard model (SM) Higgs boson looks increasingly like its SM expectation, expanded tests of the electroweak (EW) sector of the SM are a focal point of the long-term LHC program. Production of massive vector bosons via vector boson scattering provides a direct probe of the self-interactions of the massive vector bosons, which are intimately connected to the Higgs-Englert-Brout mechanism of EW symmetry breaking. A search for vector boson scattering of W and Z bosons has recently been performed by the CMS experiment using data collected in 2016. I will present this search as well as WZ cross section measurements, which are less dependent on theoretical inputs. This process is also sensitive to New Physics in the EW sector. I will present interpretations of these results in terms of explicit models predicting additional charged Higgs bosons and in the generalized framework of dimension-8 effective field theory.