Description:

Stany Sevova -- Heavy Flavor Dark Matter Searches at the LHC

Abstract: After the discovery of the Higgs boson, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) underwent a two year shutdown for intense maintenance and upgrades. During its upcoming Run 2 period, the LHC will start operating at 13 TeV, a center-of-mass collision energy considerably higher than ever achieved before, which will allow us to probe new physics beyond the Standard Model using the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector. Many extensions of the Standard Model predict the existence of dark particles that can be produced in collisions of ordinary matter, but are not directly measurable at the LHC's multipurpose experiments. There are compelling theories that propose Yukawa-type couplings to Standard Model fermions and this motivates searches at colliders for dark matter produced with heavy flavors. Dark particles would manifest themselves as missing transverse energy (MET), that is an imbalance of the total transverse momentum in the event. Using data collected with the CMS detector, Northwestern will look at scenarios of new heavy flavor physics where a single top quark or a top-quark pair can be produced in association with MET. I will present my work on a multivariate analysis tool that aids in the discrimination of a new heavy flavor physics event against Standard Model backgrounds.
 

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