Search for $WZ/ZZ$ diboson production in the dilepton $+$ dijet final state at CDF

We present the results of studies aimed at an experimental measurement of $WZ/ZZ$ diboson production in the dilepton $+$ dijet final state using data recorded with the CDF detector at the Fermilab Tevatron collider. We select events by identifying those that contain two charged leptons with a reconstructed invariant mass near the mass of the Z boson, two hadronic jets, and low transverse missing energy. To distinguish our desired signal from the dominant background, $Z$ + jets production, we use an artificial neural network trained on variables related to the reconstructed jets including a new variable that reflects the spatial spread of the energy contained within a jet that offers some discrimination between hadronic jets originating from quarks and gluons.