A Generic Search for New Physics in Same-Sign Dilepton Events in Center of Mass Energy = 1.96 TeV Proton-Antiproton Collisions

This thesis describes a generic search for new physics in events with two leptons having the same electric charge resulting from proton-antiproton collisions at the Fermilab Tevatron. The data set analyzed corresponds to 6 fb-1 of integrated luminosity recorded by the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF). A previous analysis of 1 fb-1 of data in the same channel observed a small excess, motivating a reexamination of the channel. A data-driven technique is used for modeling events where one lepton is a misidentified jet, and Monte Carlo simulation is used for the remaining Standard Model background. The data are found to be consistent with the expected background and limits are set on several models predicting events in this channel.