Search for Lepton Flavor Violating Decays of Standard Model Higgs and Neutral Heavy Higgs Bosons to a Muon and an Electronically Decaying Tau Lepton

This dissertation presents searches for Lepton Flavor Violating decay of the Standard Model Higgs Boson (h) as well as neutral Heavy Higgs Bosons (H) into a muon and an electronically decaying tau lepton. Data collected by the CMS detector in 2016, in proton-proton collisions at the LHC, at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV were used to perform both searches. No evidence of signal was found in either search, and stringent upper exclusion limits were set on both processes. Observed (expected) upper limits on the branching fraction of h decaying into a muon and a tau lepton was set at 0.25 (0.25) % at 95 % CL. These are the most stringent limits set on this process till date. Observed (expected) upper limits on product of H cross-section and branching ratio of decay into a muon and a tau lepton range from 51.9 (57.4) pb to 1.6 (2.1) pb, at 95 % CL, for H masses in the range between 200 and 900 GeV. This search is the first direct search to set limits on this decay.