Search for pair-produced three-jet resonances in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13~\mathrm{TeV}$

A search for three-jet hadronic resonance production in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV has been conducted by the CMS Collaboration at the LHC with a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of $35.9~\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$. This resonance search in events with high jet multiplicity is largely model independent, although an R-parity-violating supersymmetric model of gluino pair production which results in a six-jet final state is used to optimize the event selection. The search is optimized separately for four mass ranges from 200 GeV to 2000 GeV, with significant improvements in sensitivity compared to previous analyses, especially at low masses. Good agreement is observed between data and expected standard model and $t\bar{t}$ backgrounds. The resulting upper limits on pair-produced three-jet resonances are the most stringent to date.