A search for baryon number violation (BNV) in top-quark decays is performed using pp collisions produced by the LHC at sqrt(s) = 8 TeV. The top-quark decay considered in this search results in one light lepton (muon or electron), two jets, but no neutrino in the final state. Data used for the analysis were collected by the CMS detector and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 19.5 inverse femtobarns. The event selection is optimized for top quarks produced in pairs, with one undergoing the BNV decay and the other the standard model hadronic decay to three jets. No significant excess of events over the expected yield from standard model processes is observed. The upper limits at 95% confidence level on the branching fraction of the BNV top-quark decay are calculated to be 0.0016 and 0.0017 for the muon and the electron channels, respectively. Assuming lepton universality, an upper limit of 0.0015 results from the combination of the two channels. These limits are the first that have been obtained on a BNV process involving the top quark.
Muon channel: expected and observed yields in the tight selections for an assumed BNV decay branching fraction of zero. The uncertainties include both statistical and systematic contributions.
Electron channel: expected and observed yields in the tight selections for an assumed BNV decay branching fraction of zero. The uncertainties include both statistical and systematic contributions.
Expected and observed 95% CL upper limits on the BNV decay branching fraction.
The first observation of the Z boson decaying to four leptons in proton-proton collisions is presented. The analyzed data set corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 5.02 inverse femtobarns at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV collected by the CMS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. A pronounced resonance peak, with a statistical significance of 9.7 sigma, is observed in the distribution of the invariant mass of four leptons (electrons and/or muons) with mass and width consistent with expectations for Z boson decays. The branching fraction and cross section reported here are defined by phase space restrictions on the leptons, namely, 80 < m[4l] < 100 GeV, where m[4l] is the invariant mass of the four leptons, and m[ll] > 4 GeV for all pairs of leptons, where m[ll] is the two-lepton invariant mass. The measured branching fraction is B(Z to 4l) = (4.2 /+0.9/-0.8 (stat.) +/- 0.2 (syst.)) 10E-6 and agrees with the standard model prediction of 4.45 10E-6. The measured cross section times branching fraction is sigma(pp to Z) B(Z to 4 l) = 112 +23/-20 (stat.) +7/-5 (syst.) +3/-2 (lumi.) fb, also consistent with the standard model prediction of 120 fb. The four-lepton mass peak arising from Z to 4 l decays provides a calibration channel for the Higgs boson search in the H to ZZ to 4 l decay mode.
The measured branching fraction Z->4l.
The measured Z->4l cross section times branching fraction. The (sys) error is the total systematic error, luminosity uncertainty is separated.
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