Writing

My Ph.D. dissertation, performed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Abstract: A search for exotic particles decaying via WZ to final states with electrons and muons is performed using a data sample of pp collisions collected at 7 TeV center-of-mass energy by the CMS experiment at the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.98 inverse femtobarns. A cross section measurement for the production of WZ is also performed on a subset of the collision data. No significant excess is observed over the Standard Model background, so lower bounds at the 95% confidence level are set on the production cross sections of hypothetical particles decaying to WZ in several theoretical scenarios. Assuming the Sequential Standard Model, W’ bosons with masses below 1143 GeV are excluded. New limits are also set for several configurations of Low-Scale Technicolor.

This research was performed under an NSF-funded Research Experience for Undergraduates program at Indiana University and then extended at Wittenberg University to serve as an undergraudate honors thesis. The work was overseen by John Beggs. It was later published in the 2006 issue of Wittenberg University’s non-fiction literary magazine, Spectrum.

This research was performed as a capstone project for the Senegal: Arts & Culture academic program of the School for International Training in Spring of 2005 under the direction of Souleye Diallo. The project was advised by Mamadou Aliou Diallo, Université Cheikh Anta Diop. It was published in the 2006 issue of Wittenberg University’s non-fiction literary magazine, Spectrum.