Reach the Bottom Line of the Sbottom Search

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel search strategy for sbottom particles at the LHC, focusing on small mass differences and utilizing boosted kinematics to improve detection sensitivity.

Contribution

It presents a new method leveraging initial state radiation to enhance sbottom detection, especially for small mass splittings, and provides exclusion limits for sbottom masses.

Findings

Sbottoms with masses up to 400 GeV can be excluded for small mass splittings.

The strategy improves detection prospects for compressed spectra.

Effective at 8 TeV LHC with 20 fb^-1 data.

Abstract

We propose a new search strategy for directly-produced sbottoms at the LHC with a small mass splitting between the sbottom and its decayed stable neutralino. Our search strategy is based on boosting sbottoms through an energetic initial state radiation jet. In the final state, we require a large missing transverse energy and one or two b-jets besides the initial state radiation jet. We also define a few kinematic variables to further increase the discovery reach. For the case that the sbottom mainly decays into the bottom quark and the stable neutralino, we have found that even for a mass splitting as small as 10 GeV sbottoms with masses up to around 400 GeV can be excluded at the 95% confidence level with 20 inverse femtobarn data at the 8 TeV LHC.