Searching for Direct Stop Production in Hadronic Top Data at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper proposes a method to detect direct stop production in hadronic top data at the LHC, demonstrating potential for discovery or exclusion with current and future datasets by using top-tagging and kinematic cuts.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis strategy combining top-tagging and specific cuts to identify stop decays into top quarks and neutral particles in hadronic channels.

Findings

Evidence for stops between 300-600 GeV can be found with 5 fb^-1 at 7 TeV.

Discovery or exclusion is possible with 20 fb^-1 at 8 TeV in large parameter regions.

Background can be effectively suppressed, enabling potential discovery with few events.

Abstract

We argue that evidence can be uncovered for stops between 300-600 GeV in 5 fb^-1 of 7 TeV proton-proton collisions if they decay into top quarks and light neutral particles. We also show that with 20 fb^-1 of 8 TeV running, discovery or exclusion can be made in large regions of parameter space. Events with a fully hadronic top/anti-top pair and a pair of invisible decay products can be identified with the top-tagging of a fat jet, a single b-tag, a missing transverse energy cut, as well as other kinematic cuts to reduce backgrounds with real top quarks in them. Such cuts obliterate the background suggesting discovery can be made with a handful of events.