Physics (Internal)

Search for massive new physics particles using boosted top quarks and Higgs bosons with the CMS detector at the CERN LHC

This event is part of the HEE Seminar Series.

Massive new particles are predicted in many beyond standard model (BSM) theories that are well within the energy reach of the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The CMS experiment has been collecting LHC proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV since 2015. In this talk, I will review some recent CMS searches for BSM particles that decay to a pair of Higgs bosons, or a Higgs boson and a top quark, using LHC data from 2015-2016. The Higgs boson and the top quark are the two most massive standard model particles and frequently occur in the decay processes of BSM particles. A massive decaying particle can impart sufficient kinetic energy to the daughters so that the decay chain is highly collimated, and can produce spectacular signatures in the detector, particularly when the decay is entirely hadronic, producing Higgs boson jets or top quark jets. The LHC data analyses are increasingly using novel detection techniques like Higgs jet and top jet tagging to search for BSM particles such as vector-like quarks, or gravitons in extradimensional models. I will discuss these tagging techniques used at the CMS experiment and how they are driving the new physics search frontier at the LHC.