Improving the sensitivity of stop searches with on-shell constrained invariant mass variables

• Published in: The journal of high energy physics Vol. 2015; no. 5; p. 1
• Main Authors: Cho, Won Sang, Gainer, James S., Kim, Doojin, Matchev, Konstantin T., Moortgat, Filip, Pape, Luc, Park, Myeonghun
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.05.2015; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Classical and Quantum Gravitation; Elementary Particles; High energy physics; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Quantum Field Theories; Quantum Field Theory; Quantum Physics; Regular Article - Theoretical Physics; Relativity Theory; String Theory; Hadronic Colliders; Supersymmetry Phenomenology
• ISSN: 1029-8479; 1029-8479
• DOI: 10.1007/JHEP05(2015)040

A bstract The search for light stops is of paramount importance, both in general as a promising path to the discovery of beyond the standard model physics and more specifically as a way of evaluating the success of the naturalness paradigm. While the LHC experiments have ruled out much of the relevant parameter space, there are “stop gaps”, i.e., values of sparticle masses for which existing LHC analyses have relatively little sensitivity to light stops. We point out that techniques involving on-shell constrained M 2 variables can do much to enhance sensitivity in this region and hence help close the stop gaps. We demonstrate the use of these variables for several benchmark points and describe the effect of realistic complications, such as detector effects and combinatorial backgrounds, in order to provide a useful toolkit for light stop searches in particular, and new physics searches at the LHC in general.