Observation of electroweak W±W± JJ production with the CMS experiment

Abstract

The CMS detector at the CERN LHC is sensitive to Standard Model predictions regarding the production of two W bosons with the same charge accompanied by two jets. In particular, when these particles are produced in a topology where the jets have a high invariant mass and are largely separated in pseudo-rapidity, the data can be used to test Standard Model predictions relating to vector boson scattering i.e. processes which have two incoming vector bosons and two outgoing vector bosons. This is interesting because it can be used to probe the couplings of the newly discovered Higgs boson to vector bosons. The channel in which the W bosons decay to charged leptons and neutrinos is the most sensitive and is thus the one that is used by the CMS Collaboration for the initial observation of this process. The data that is used is the 36 fb-1 of data that the CMS detector collected in 2016 at a proton-proton center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The main result is the observed significance for electroweak production of W±W± JJ, which is 5.5 standard deviations, consistent with the Standard Model expectation of 5.7 standard deviations. Additionally, limits are set on anomalous quartic gauge couplings and on the vector boson fusion production cross section times branching ratio to W± W± of doubly charged Higgs bosons in the Georgi-Macachek model.