Exploring sensitivity to new physics effects in processes with top quarks and vector bosons

The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment is a large general-purpose particle detector, located at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN). At CERN, the large hadron collider (LHC) collides protons at energies upwards of 13 TeV, to study the fundamental forces and origins of matter at the beginning of our universe. In the CMS experiment, data from these collisions is recorded to test and explore the standard model (SM) of particle physics, the model that describes 3 of the 4 fundamental forces of nature. While the SM has successfully described known particles and their interactions, there is evidence of more new physics beyond the SM. If new physics is too heavy to be produced directly at the LHC, effective field theories provide a general framework to search for indirect evidence of these new physics effects. By targeting a rare process in which a top quark is produced with a W and Z boson, this study aims to understand what kinds of new physics effects this process may be sensitive to within the framework of effective field theory.