A search for a doubly-charged Higgs boson in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

TL;DR

This paper reports a search for doubly-charged Higgs bosons in proton-proton collisions at 7 TeV, using CMS data, setting new mass limits and improving constraints over previous results.

Contribution

First search for doubly-charged Higgs bosons at 7 TeV with CMS, establishing new mass bounds and enhancing previous experimental constraints.

Findings

No excess observed over background predictions.

Set upper limits on Phi[++] production cross section.

Established more stringent lower bounds on Phi[++] mass.

Abstract

A search for a doubly-charged Higgs boson in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV is presented. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 4.9 inverse femtobarns, collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC. The search is performed using events with three or more isolated charged leptons of any flavor, giving sensitivity to the decays of pair-produced triplet components Phi[++]Phi[--], and Phi[++]Phi[-] from associated production. No excess is observed compared to the background prediction, and upper limits at the 95% confidence level are set on the Phi[++] production cross section, under specific assumptions on its branching fractions. Lower bounds on the Phi[++] mass are reported, providing significantly more stringent constraints than previously published limits.