A Search for New Physics with High Mass Tau Pairs in PPbar Collisions at sqrt(s)=1.96 TeV at CDF

TL;DR

This paper reports a search for new heavy particles decaying into tau pairs in proton-antiproton collisions at 1.96 TeV, setting limits on their production based on data from the CDF detector.

Contribution

It introduces a method for tau identification and provides the first limits on heavy scalar and vector particles decaying to tau pairs at this energy.

Findings

Observed 4 events in high-mass region, consistent with background expectations.

Set upper limits on cross section times branching ratio for new particles.

No significant evidence for new physics was found.

Abstract

We present the results of a search for new particles decaying to tau pairs using the data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 195 pb^-1 collected from March 2002 to September 2003 with the CDF detector at the Tevatron. Hypothetical particles, such as Zprime and MSSM Higgs bosons can potentially produce the tau pair final state. We discuss the method of tau identification, and show the signal acceptance versus new particle mass. The low-mass region, dominated by Z -> tau tau, is used as a control region. In the high-mass region, we expect 2.8 +/- 0.5 events from known background sources, and observe 4 events in the data sample. Thus no significant excess is observed, and we set upper limits on the cross section times branching ratio as a function of the masses of heavy scalar and vector particles.