Search for heavy resonances decaying to WW, WZ, or WH boson pairs in a final state consisting of a lepton and a large-radius jet in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV

TL;DR

This paper reports a search for new heavy resonances decaying into boson pairs in proton-proton collisions at 13 TeV, using the CMS detector, setting the most stringent limits to date with no significant excess observed.

Contribution

It introduces a novel search strategy for heavy resonances decaying to boson pairs with advanced jet substructure techniques and provides the most stringent limits to date on various theoretical models.

Findings

No significant excess observed above background.

Set the most stringent upper limits on resonance production cross sections.

Interpreted results within multiple theoretical models.

Abstract

A search for new heavy resonances decaying to pairs of bosons (WW, WZ, or WH) is presented. The analysis uses data from proton-proton collisions collected with the CMS detector at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 137 fb$^{-1}$. One of the bosons is required to be a W boson decaying to an electron or muon and a neutrino, while the other boson is required to be reconstructed as a single jet with mass and substructure compatible with a quark pair from a W, Z, or Higgs boson decay. The search is performed in the resonance mass range between 1.0 and 4.5 TeV and includes a specific search for resonances produced via vector boson fusion. The signal is extracted using a two-dimensional maximum likelihood fit to the jet mass and the diboson invariant mass distributions. No significant excess is observed above the estimated background. Model-independent upper limits on the production cross sections of spin-0, spin-1, and spin-2 heavy resonances are derived as functions of the resonance mass and are interpreted in the context of bulk radion, heavy vector triplet, and bulk graviton models. The reported bounds are the most stringent to date.