Evidence for a Higgs boson in tau decays with the CMS detector

Abstract

In this thesis, I describe the search for a Higgs boson through its decay to a pair of tan leptons with the tau-pair subsequently decaying to ail electron, a muon, and neutrinos. The search is performed using data collected from proton-proton collisions by the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, corresponding to 5.0 fb-1 of integrated luminosity recorded at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and 19.7 fb-1 at 8 TeV. The expected significance for a Standard Model Higgs boson signal with a mass of 125 GeV is at the level of 1.2 standard deviations for the electron muon tau-pair decay mode. A mild excess of events is seen above the SM background expectation in this decay mode, consistent with a SM Higgs boson of mass 125 GeV. In combination with results using other tau-pair decay modes, an excess of events above the background expectation is seen at the level of 3.4 standard deviations. This constitutes the first evidence for a Higgs boson to decay to leptons. This thesis also describes an analysis of the data in the context of physics beyond the Standard Model, particularly in the framework of its Minimal Supersymnnetric extension.