A search for physics beyond the standard model in events with at least three leptons is presented. The data sample, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.5 inverse femtobarns of proton-proton collisions with center-of-mass energy sqrt(s) = 8 TeV, was collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC during 2012. The data are divided into exclusive categories based on the number of leptons and their flavor, the presence or absence of an opposite-sign, same-flavor lepton pair (OSSF), the invariant mass of the OSSF pair, the presence or absence of a tagged bottom-quark jet, the number of identified hadronically decaying tau leptons, and the magnitude of the missing transverse energy and of the scalar sum of jet transverse momenta. The numbers of observed events are found to be consistent with the expected numbers from standard model processes, and limits are placed on new-physics scenarios that yield multilepton final states. In particular, scenarios that predict Higgs boson production in the context of supersymmetric decay chains are examined. We also place a 95% confidence level upper limit of 1.3% on the branching fraction for the decay of a top quark to a charm quark and a Higgs boson (t to c H), which translates to a bound on the left- and right-handed top-charm flavor-violating Higgs Yukawa couplings, lambda[H, tc] and lambda[H, ct], respectively, of sqrt(abs(lambda[H, tc])^2 + abs(lambda[H, ct])^2) < 0.21.
A search is performed for a massive new vector-like quark T, with charge 2/3, that is pair produced together with its antiparticle in proton-proton collisions. The data were collected by the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider in 2012 at sqrt(s) = 8 TeV and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 19.5 inverse femtobarns. The T quark is assumed to decay into three different final states, bW, tZ, and tH. The search is carried out using events with at least one isolated lepton. No deviations from standard model expectations are observed, and lower limits are set on the T quark mass at 95% confidence level. The lower limit lies between 687 and 782 GeV for all possible values of the branching fractions into the three different final states assuming strong production. These limits are the most stringent constraints to date on the existence of such a quark.
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