Techniques for improved heavy particle searches with jet substructure

We present a generic method for improving the effectiveness of heavy particle searches in hadronic channels at the Large Hadron Collider. By selectively removing, or pruning, protojets from the substructure provided by a k_T-style jet algorithm, we improve the mass resolution for heavy decays and decrease the QCD background. We show that the protojets removed are typical of soft radiation and underlying event contributions, and atypical of accurately reconstructed heavy particles.