Parametric background model for a search for doubly charged Higgs bosons at CMS

A variety of exotic models predict a doubly charged Higgs-like particle that can be pair-produced in hadronic interactions via a Drell-Yan-like mechanism. The H++ and H-- can each decay to a pair of like-sign leptons (muons or electrons in this study), not necessarily of the same flavor, with TeV-scale mass, providing a distinctive event signature. The signature features extremely low background, requiring parameterizations to be used to extrapolate the expected background. We present the model we use for a search at CMS and the methods used to validate the results.