Search for resonances decaying to three W bosons in the hadronic final state in proton-proton collisions at √s = 13 TeV

Abstract

A search for Kaluza-Klein excited vector boson resonances, WKK, decaying in cascade to three W bosons via a scalar radion R, WKK → WR → WWW, in a final state containing two or three massive jets is presented. The search is performed with ffiffi s p ¼ 13 TeV proton-proton collision data collected by the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC during 2016–2018, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb−1. Two final states are simultaneously probed, one where the two W bosons produced by the R decay are reconstructed as separate, large-radius, massive jets, and one where they are merged into a single large radius jet. The observed data are in agreement with the standard model expectations. Limits are set on the product of the WKK resonance cross section and branching fraction to three W bosons in an extended warped extra-dimensional model and are the first of their kind at the LHC.