Search for lepton flavour violation in the emu continuum with the ATLAS detector in sqrt(s) = 7 TeV pp collisions at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper searches for lepton flavor violation in the emu channel at the LHC, setting limits on R-parity violating scalar top quark production cross sections across a range of masses.

Contribution

It provides the first limits on R-parity violating scalar top quark exchange in the emu continuum using ATLAS data at 7 TeV.

Findings

No excess observed over Standard Model backgrounds.

Limits on scalar top production cross section vary from 170 fb to 30 fb.

Constraints on R-parity-violating couplings as a function of top squark mass.

Abstract

This paper presents a search for the t-channel exchange of an R-parity violating scalar top quark (\={t}) in the emu continuum using 2.1/fb of data collected by the ATLAS detector in sqrt(s) = 7 TeV pp collisions at the Large Hadron Collider. Data are found to be consistent with the expectation from the Standard Model backgrounds. Limits on R-parity-violating couplings at 95% C.L. are calculated as a function of the scalar top mass (m_{\={t}}). The upper limits on the production cross section for pp->emuX, through the t-channel exchange of a scalar top quark, ranges from 170 fb for m_{\={t}}=95 GeV to 30 fb for m_{\={t}}=1000 GeV.