Search for soft unclustered energy patterns in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV using data scouting

Abstract

A search for soft unclustered energy patterns (SUEPs) is conducted using proton-proton collision data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 127 fb$^{-1}$ at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, collected via the data scouting stream of the CMS experiment at the LHC. Only the results of the high-level trigger reconstruction are recorded to enable a lower threshold on the hadronic activity. This increases the acceptance for SUEP signatures, which are predicted by hidden-valley models with a large 't Hooft coupling. The observed results are consistent with the standard model background prediction. The most stringent limits to date are set on the gluon fusion production of heavy scalar mediators resulting in SUEP-like signals.