Search for Top Quark Pair Resonances with the CMS Detector at the LHC

The Standard Model of particle physics is not the final theory. It breaks at larger (TeV) scales and thus can not explain the hierarchy problem, the unification of couplings and some physical phenomena. Several physical models, referred to as Beyond the Standard Model, have been proposed to account for the phenomena which are not explained by the Standard Model, and to answer to some of these open questions. As the top quark has as an enormous mass of about 173.3 GeV, it plays an essential role in searches for new physics. Various models beyond the Standard Model predict the existence of heavy particles decaying into top quark pairs. These particles manifest themselves as resonant structures in the invariant mass spectrum of the top quark pairs. In this thesis, a model-independent search has been performed for top quark pair resonances in the mass range close to the top quark pair production threshold. The Topcolor Z' model is considered as a reference model. The presented search focuses on top quark pair events selected from data samples corresponding to 1.09 fb-1 of integrated luminosity collected with the CMS detector in the 2011 run period at a center-of-mass energy of √(s)=7 TeV at the large hadron collider (LHC). A cut based selection is implemented to identify top quark pair candidates decaying in the muon+jets channel, by requiring one isolated muon, missing transverse energy and at least four jets. The identified final state objects are used to reconstruct the invariant top quark pair mass spectrum. No excess is observed in the CMS data over the expectation of the standard model processes, namely no considerable evidence of new physics was found. Therefore, a limit is set on the topcolor Z' boson production cross section as a function of the Z' mass. Leptophobic topcolor Z' bosons with narrow (wide) width 1.2% (10%) are excluded at 95% confidence level for masses below 710 (1145) GeV.