Kaitlin Salyer, BU: A Search for Flavor-Changing Neutral Current Interactions in Leptonic Final States using the CMS Detector

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest particle accelerator and a lab for high energy particle physics. Notably, in 2012, the LHC announced that the Higgs Boson had been observed at two of its major experiments, including the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS). We are now in an era of particle physics where the Higgs boson can be used to probe theories of physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM). In particular, flavor-changing neutral current (FCNC) interactions, such as a top quark decaying to a Higgs boson and an up or charm quark, are processes greatly suppressed in the Standard Model. The Standard Model predicted cross section for these interactions is on the order of 10^(−15) fb, which is too rare to be observed with the LHC. This means that any observance of FCNC interactions would be evidence of BSM physics. The presented analysis sets upper limits on the tHq coupling constant, using data collected at CMS during 2016-2018. I will present my search for FCNC in leptonic final states, which utilizes robust, data-driven background estimation methods and multivariate techniques to improve our results.