| With a search for new physics in mind, I discuss high transverse momentum muons in CMS, focusing on their dedicated reconstruction algorithms, and using cosmic-ray data to evaluate their performance. I then present the results from a shape-based search for new resonances in the dimuon mass spectrum from 40 pb-1 of pp collisions delivered by the LHC at s = 7 TeV in 2010. The results are normalized using the Z0 peak so that many uncertainties (e.g. on the luminosity) cancel. No significant excess is observed, and the mass limits obtained are similar to those from the Tevatron with 100 times the data, due to the LHC's higher energy. I also present a summary of the update to the search using the first 1.1 fb-1 of data from the 2011 LHC run. In the Appendices, I discuss statistical techniques relevant to issues arising in many LHC analyses: hypothesis testing and the performance of recipes for signal significance and parameter interval estimation. |
