Search for WZ + ZZ production with missing transverse energy and b jets at CDF

Observation of diboson processes at hadron colliders is an important milestone on the road to discovery or exclusion of the standard model Higgs boson. Since the decay processes happen to be closely related, methods, tools, and insights obtained through the more common diboson decays can be incorporated into low-mass standard model Higgs searches. The combined WW + WZ + ZZ diboson cross section has been measured at the Tevatron in hadronic decay modes. In this thesis we take this one step closer to the Higgs by measuring just the WZ + ZZ cross section, exploiting a novel artificial neural network based b-jet tagger to separate the WW background. The number of signal events is extracted from data events with large E /T using a simultaneous fit in events with and without two jets consistent with B hadron decays. Using 5.2 fb-1 of data from the CDF II detector, we measure a cross section of sigma( pp¯ → WZ, ZZ) = 5.8+3.6-3.0 pb, in agreement with the standard model.