Search for heavy gauge W' bosons in events with an energetic lepton and large missing transverse momentum at sqrt(s) = 13 TeV

TL;DR

This paper reports a search for heavy W' bosons in proton-proton collisions at 13 TeV, setting new mass exclusion limits up to 4.1 TeV and improving previous results with larger data and refined analysis.

Contribution

It presents the first search at 13 TeV for W' bosons in leptonic final states, establishing more stringent mass limits and providing model-independent exclusion bounds.

Findings

No evidence of W' bosons was observed.

Masses below 4.1 TeV are excluded at 95% confidence level.

New exclusion limits improve upon previous 8 TeV results.

Abstract

A search is presented for W' bosons in events with an electron or muon and large missing transverse momentum, using proton-proton collision data at sqrt(s) = 13 TeV collected with the CMS detector in 2015 and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 2.3 inverse femtobarns. No evidence of an excess of events relative to the standard model expectations is observed. For a W' boson described by the sequential standard model, upper limits at 95% confidence level are set on the product of the production cross section and branching fraction and lower limits are established on the new boson mass. Masses below 4.1 TeV are excluded combining electron and muon decay channels, significantly improving upon the results obtained with the 8 TeV data. Exclusion limits at 95% confidence level on the product of the W' production cross section and branching fraction are also derived in combination with the 8 TeV data. Finally, exclusion limits are set for the production of generic W' bosons decaying into this final state using a model-independent approach.