A search for anomalous production of multilepton events using 19.5 fb⁻¹ of √s = 8 TeV LHC data

An inclusive search for physics beyond the standard model in events with at least three leptons is presented. The search is based on a sample of pp collision data, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.5 fb⁻¹, collected at a center-of-mass energy √s = 8 TeV with the CMS detector at the LHC in 2012. The data is divided into exclusive search channels characterized by the number and flavor of the leptons, the number of opposite-sign, same-flavor lepton pairs (OSSF), the invariant mass of the OSSF lepton pair, the presence or absence of hadronically decaying τ-leptons, and the number of identified bottom-quark jets. Additionally, kinematic properties of the event, such as the scalar sum of jet transverse momenta and the magnitude of the missing transverse energy in the event, are considered. Standard model backgrounds are estimated using data control samples and from samples of simulated events. The number of observed events are consistent with the expectations from standard model processes. We therefore place 95% confidence level upper limits on various supersymmetric models that yield multilepton final states. In particular, scenarios that predict production of Higgs bosons arising from supersymmetric decays are examined.