Discrimination of low missing energy look-alikes at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper develops a systematic method using kinematic features to distinguish between different new physics models with low missing energy signatures at the LHC, focusing on their mass spectra and particle spins.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to differentiate low missing energy new physics scenarios at the LHC using combined kinematic features and detailed Monte Carlo analysis.

Findings

Models with ~600 GeV particles can be distinguished at 14 TeV LHC with 5-30 fb^{-1}.

The method effectively differentiates minimal models of supersymmetry, extra dimensions, and Littlest Higgs.

Non-minimal models may still pose challenges for discrimination.

Abstract

The problem of discriminating possible scenarios of TeV scale new physics with large missing energy signature at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has received some attention in the recent past. We consider the complementary, and yet unexplored, case of theories predicting much softer missing energy spectra. As there is enough scope for such models to fake each other by having similar final states at the LHC, we have outlined a systematic method based on a combination of different kinematic features which can be used to distinguish among different possibilities. These features often trace back to the underlying mass spectrum and the spins of the new particles present in these models. As examples of "low missing energy look-alikes", we consider Supersymmetry with R-parity violation, Universal Extra Dimensions with both KK-parity conserved and KK-parity violated and the Littlest Higgs model with T-parity violated by the Wess-Zumino-Witten anomaly term. Through detailed Monte Carlo analysis of the four and higher lepton final states predicted by these models, we show that the models in their minimal forms may be distinguished at the LHC, while non-minimal variations can always leave scope for further confusion. We find that, for strongly interacting new particle mass-scale ~600 GeV (1 TeV), the simplest versions of the different theories can be discriminated at the LHC running at sqrt{s}=14 TeV within an integrated luminosity of 5 (30) fb^{-1}.