Abstract
This thesis investigates scenarios which may arise in the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM) whereby the Lightest Supersymmetric Particle (LSP) may in fact have a mass of only a few GeV whilst still evading current minimal Supersymmetry (SUSY) search efforts. In these NMSSM models a Next-to-Lightest Supersymmetric Particle (NLSP) decays to an SM-like Higgs boson and an LSP, with sufficiently small mass gaps such that any missing transverse energy (MET) is highly suppressed.Firstly these scenarios are interpreted in the context of an existing MET-based analysis, considering an all-hadronic final state, in order to gauge the current sensitivity which may be attained using general purpose SUSY search techniques.
Experimental sensitivity is then extended by considering and modifying a novel analysis, which focuses on the identification of highly boosted Higgs bosons decaying to bottom quark pairs. This analysis utilises the full datasets from proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV for run years 2016 and 2017 at the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), corresponding to respective integrated luminosities of 35.9 fb−1 and 41.5 fb−1.
Date of Award | 28 Nov 2019 |
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Original language | English |
Awarding Institution |
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Supervisor | Henning U Flaecher (Supervisor) |