Search for new heavy resonances decaying into a Z boson and a massive vector boson in the $2\ell2$q final state at $\sqrt{s}=13$~TeV

This paper describes a search for new heavy diboson resonances decaying to the $2\ell2\text{q}$ final state, with two charged leptons ($\ell=e,\mu$) produced by the decay of a $\text{Z}$ boson, and two quarks produced by the hadronic decay of a $\text{W}$ or $\text{Z}$ boson. The search is performed for resonance masses from $400$ to $4500~\text{GeV}$. Two categories are defined based on the merged or resolved reconstruction of the hadronically decaying vector boson, optimized for high- and low-mass resonances respectively. The search is based on data collected during 2016 by the CMS experiment at the LHC in proton-proton collisions with a center-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s}=13~\text{TeV}$, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of $35.9~\text{fb}^{-1}$. Upper limits on the production cross section of heavy spin-1 and spin-2 resonances are derived as a function of the resonance mass, and exclusion limits of $\text{W'}$ and bulk graviton particles are produced in the framework of the heavy vector triplet model and warped extra dimensions, respectively.