Search for the production of dark matter candidates in association with heavy dimuon resonance using the CMS open data for proton–proton collisions at $$\sqrt{s}$$ = 8 TeV

Abstract

Abstract In this work, we present a search for the possible production of Dark Matter particles at the Large Hadron Collider alongside a new hypothetical neutral gauge boson denoted by $${Z}^{\prime }$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msup> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>Z</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mo>′</mml:mo> </mml:msup> </mml:math> . The topology of the studied events is dimuons plus large missing transverse momentum. The study is performed using the CMS open data samples collected by the CMS experiment in the LHC proton–proton collisions at center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV in 2012, which corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 11.6 $$\hbox {fb}^{-1}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msup> <mml:mtext>fb</mml:mtext> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>-</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msup> </mml:math> , and the corresponding CMS open Monte Carlo samples. Two benchmark scenarios were used for interpreting the data, the Dark Higgs scenario and the effective field theory formalism. No evidence for the existence of dark matter candidates was found. 95 $$\%$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mo>%</mml:mo> </mml:math> confidence level limits are set on the masses of the $${Z}^{\prime }$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msup> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>Z</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mo>′</mml:mo> </mml:msup> </mml:math> and the cutoff scale of the effective field theory.