Search for jet extinction in the inclusive jet-pT spectrum from proton-proton collisions at s=8 TeV

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published articles title, journal citation, and DOI.The first search at the LHC for the extinction of QCD jet production is presented, using data collected with the CMS detector corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 10.7  fb−1 of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV. The extinction model studied in this analysis is motivated by the search for signatures of strong gravity at the TeV scale (terascale gravity) and assumes the existence of string couplings in the strong-coupling limit. In this limit, the string model predicts the suppression of all high-transverse-momentum standard model processes, including jet production, beyond a certain energy scale. To test this prediction, the measured transverse-momentum spectrum is compared to the theoretical prediction of the standard model. No significant deficit of events is found at high transverse momentum. A 95% confidence level lower limit of 3.3 TeV is set on the extinction mass scale

Searches for electroweak neutralino and chargino production in channels with Higgs, Z, and W bosons in pp collisions at 8 TeV

Searches for supersymmetry (SUSY) are presented based on the electroweak pair production of neutralinos and charginos, leading to decay channels with Higgs, Z, and W bosons and undetected lightest SUSY particles (LSPs). The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of about 19.5 fb(-1) of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV collected in 2012 with the CMS detector at the LHC. The main emphasis is neutralino pair production in which each neutralino decays either to a Higgs boson (h) and an LSP or to a Z boson and an LSP, leading to hh, hZ, and ZZ states with missing transverse energy (E-T(miss)). A second aspect is chargino-neutralino pair production, leading to hW states with E-T(miss). The decays of a Higgs boson to a bottom-quark pair, to a photon pair, and to final states with leptons are considered in conjunction with hadronic and leptonic decay modes of the Z and W bosons. No evidence is found for supersymmetric particles, and 95% confidence level upper limits are evaluated for the respective pair production cross sections and for neutralino and chargino mass values

The optical detection unit for Baikal-GVD neutrino telescope

The first stage of the GVD-cluster composed of five strings was deployed in April 2014. Each string consists of two sections with 12 optical modules per section. A section is the basic detection unit of the Baikal neutrino telescope. We will describe the section design, review its basic elements – optical modules, FADC readout units, slow control and calibration systems, and present selected results for section in-situ tests in Lake Baikal

Status and perspectives of the BAIKAL-GVD project

The neutrino telescope Baikal-GVD in Lake Baikal will be a research infrastructure aimed mainly at studying astrophysical neutrino fluxes. The telescope will consist of clusters of strings - functionally independent sub-arrays. The deployment of the first demonstration cluster has been started in April 2013. In 2014 the deployment of the second stage of the demonstration cluster has been performed. We describe the configuration and design of the first GVD cluster and review the current status of cluster deployment in Lake Baikal

The optical detection unit for Baikal-GVD neutrino telescope

The first stage of the GVD-cluster composed of five strings was deployed in April 2014. Each string consists of two sections with 12 optical modules per section. A section is the basic detection unit of the Baikal neutrino telescope. We will describe the section design, review its basic elements - optical modules, FADC readout units, slow control and calibration systems, and present selected results for section in-situ tests in Lake Baikal