Date of Award

Summer 2014

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Physics

First Advisor

Ian P. Shipsey

Committee Chair

Ian P. Shipsey

Committee Member 1

Daniela Bortoletto

Committee Member 2

Martin Kruczenski

Abstract

The first search at the LHC for long-lived neutral particles decaying to pairs of muons by using only the muon chambers is presented. Events were collected by the CMS detector during pp collisions at √s = 8 TeV and selected from data samples corresponding to 20.5 fb-1 of integrated luminosity. No background events are expected after the full analysis selection. Expected upper limits are derived for a model which predicts a heavy scalar decaying to two long-lived particles, each of which can decay to muon pairs. Combined expected upper limits with an analysis utilizing the CMS silicon tracker to search for the same signature are also presented.

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