UC San Diego

If an excess potentially heralding new physics is noticed in collider data, it would be useful to be able to compare the data with entire classes of models at once. This talk discusses a method that applies when the new physics corresponds to the production and decay of a single, relatively narrow, s-channel resonance. A simplifed model of the resonance allows us to convert an estimated signal cross section into model-independent bounds on the product of the branching ratios corresponding to production and decay. This quickly reveals whether a given class of models could possibly produce a signal of the observed size. We will describe how to apply our analysis framework to cases of current experimental interest, including resonances decaying to dibosons, diphotons, dileptons, or dijets.