Unbinned Likelihood Fits for Setting Limits on 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) with TeV-scale mass, providing a distinctive event signature. Since the event signature features a distinctively shaped mass peak, an unbinned likelihood fit can increase sensitivity compared to a simple counting experiment. We discuss our implementation and results of an unbinned likelihood fit in our analysis at CMS.