Protons consist of three valence quarks, two up-quarks and one down-quark, held together by gluons and a sea of quark-antiquark pairs. Collectively, quarks and gluons are referred to as partons. In a proton-proton collision, typically only one parton of each proton undergoes a hard scattering - referred to as single-parton scattering - leaving the remainder of each proton only slightly disturbed. Here, we report the study of double- and triple-parton scatterings through the simultaneous production of three J/$\psi$ mesons, which consist of a charm quark-antiquark pair, in proton-proton collisions recorded with the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. We observed this process - reconstructed through the decays of J/$\psi$ mesons into pairs of oppositely charged muons - with a statistical significance above five standard deviations. We measured the inclusive fiducial cross section to be 272 $^{+141}_{-104}$ (stat) $\pm$ 17 (syst) fb, and compared it to theoretical expectations for triple-J/$\psi$ meson production in single-, double- and triple-parton scattering scenarios. Assuming factorization of multiple hard-scattering probabilities in terms of single-parton scattering cross sections, double- and triple-parton scattering are the dominant contributions for the measured process.
A measurement of the ratio of branching fractions $R$(J/$\psi$) = $\mathcal{B}$(B$^+_\text{c}$$\to$ J/$\psi$$\tau^+\nu_\tau$)/$\mathcal{B}$(B$^+_\text{c}$$\to$ J/$\psi$$\mu^+\nu_\mu$) in the J/$\psi$$\to$$\mu^+\mu^-$, $\tau^+$$\to$$\mu^+\mu_\tau\overline{\nu}_\tau$ decay channel is presented. This measurement uses a sample of proton-proton collision data collected at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV by the CMS experiment in 2018, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 59.7 fb$^{-1}$. The measured ratio, $R$(J/$\psi$) = 0.17$^{+ 0.18}_{- 0.17}$ (stat) $^{+ 0.21}_{- 0.22}$ (syst) $^{+ 0.19}_{- 0.18}$ (theo) = 0.17 $\pm$ 0.33, agrees with the value of 0.2582 $\pm$ 0.0038 predicted by the standard model, which assumes lepton flavor universality.
The J/$\psi$$\to$$\mu^+\mu^-\mu^+\mu^-$ decay has been observed with a statistical significance in excess of five standard deviations. The analysis is based on an event sample of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, collected by the CMS experiment in 2018 and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 33.6 fb$^{-1}$. Normalizing to the J/$\psi$$\to$$\mu^+\mu^-$ decay mode leads to a branching fraction [10.1 $^{+3.3}_{-2.7}$ (stat) $\pm$ 0.4 (syst)] $\times$ 10$^{-7}$, a value that is consistent with the standard model prediction.
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