A measurement of the Z gamma to nu nu-bar gamma production cross section in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 8 TeV is presented, using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.6 inverse femtobarns collected with the CMS detector at the LHC. This measurement is based on the observation of events with large missing energy and with a single photon with transverse momentum above 145 GeV and absolute pseudorapidity in the range |eta| < 1.44. The measured Z gamma to nu nu-bar gamma production cross section, 52.7 +/- 2.1(stat) +/- 6.4 (syst) +/- 1.4 (lumi) fb, agrees well with the standard model prediction of 50.0 +2.4 -2.2 fb. A study of the photon transverse momentum spectrum yields the most stringent limits to date on the anomalous Z-Z-gamma and Z-gamma-gamma trilinear gauge boson couplings.
A search for an exotic decay of the Higgs boson to a pair of light pseudoscalar bosons is performed for the first time in the final state with two b quarks and two $\tau$ leptons. The search is motivated in the context of models of physics beyond the standard model (SM), such as two Higgs doublet models extended with a complex scalar singlet (2HDM+S), which include the next-to-minimal supersymmetric SM (NMSSM). The results are based on a data set of proton-proton collisions corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb$^{-1}$, accumulated by the CMS experiment at the LHC in 2016 at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. Masses of the pseudoscalar boson between 15 and 60 GeV are probed, and no excess of events above the SM expectation is observed. Upper limits between 3 and 12% are set on the branching fraction $\mathcal{B}$(h $\to$ aa $\to$ 2$\tau$2b) assuming the SM production of the Higgs boson. Upper limits are also set on the branching fraction of the Higgs boson to two light pseudoscalar bosons in different 2HDM+S scenarios. Assuming the SM production cross section for the Higgs boson, the upper limit on this quantity is as low as 20% for a mass of the pseudoscalar of 40 GeV in the NMSSM.
The inclusive cross section of top quark-antiquark pairs produced in $p\bar{p}$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=1.96$ TeV is measured in the lepton$+$jets and dilepton decay channels. The data sample corresponds to 9.7 fb${}^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity recorded with the D0 detector during Run II of the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. Employing multivariate analysis techniques we measure the cross section in the two decay channels and we perform a combined cross section measurement. For a top quark mass of 172.5 GeV, we measure a combined inclusive top quark-antiquark pair production cross section of $\sigma_{t\bar{t}} = 7.26 \pm 0.13\,(\mathrm{stat.})\,^{+0.57}_{-0.50}\,(\mathrm{syst.})$ pb which is consistent with standard model predictions. We also perform a likelihood fit to the measured and predicted top quark mass dependence of the inclusive cross section, which yields a measurement of the pole mass of the top quark. The extracted value is $m_t = 172.8 \pm 1.1\,(\mathrm{theo.})\,^{+3.3}_{-3.1}\,(\mathrm{exp.})$ GeV.
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