Search for electroweak production of charginos and neutralinos at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV in final states containing hadronic decays of WW, WZ, or WH and missing transverse momentum

Abstract

This Letter presents a search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos via electroweak interactions. The results are based on data from proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV collected with the CMS detector at the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 137 fb$^{-1}$. The search considers final states with large missing transverse momentum and pairs of hadronically decaying bosons WW, WZ, and WH, where H is the Higgs boson. These bosons are identified using novel algorithms. No significant excess of events is observed relative to the expectations from the standard model. Limits at the 95% confidence level are placed on the cross section for production of mass-degenerate wino-like supersymmetric particles $\tildeχ_1^\pm$ and $\tildeχ_2^0$, and mass-degenerate higgsino-like supersymmetric particles $\tildeχ_1^\pm$, $\tildeχ_2^0$, and $\tildeχ_3^0$. In the limit of a nearly-massless lightest supersymmetric particle $\tildeχ_1^0$, wino-like particles with masses up to 870 and 960 GeV are excluded in the cases of $\tildeχ_2^0$ $\to$ Z$\tildeχ_1^0$ and $\tildeχ_2^0$ $\to$ H$\tildeχ_1^0$, respectively, and higgsino-like particles are excluded between 300 and 650 GeV.