Boosted di-boson from a mixed heavy stop

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel search strategy for detecting pair-produced heavy top squarks decaying into lighter squarks and bosons, using jet substructure techniques to identify boosted Higgs and Z bosons at the LHC.

Contribution

It introduces a new method employing jet substructure and $M_{T2}$ reconstruction to enhance detection of heavy top squarks decaying into lighter states with di-boson signatures.

Findings

Potential 4-5 sigma signal at 14 TeV LHC with 100 fb$^{-1}$

Effective tagging of boosted Higgs and Z bosons

Improved background suppression using $M_{T2}$ reconstruction

Abstract

The lighter mass eigenstate ($\widetilde{t}_1$) of the two top squarks, the scalar superpartners of the top quark, is extremely difficult to discover if it is almost degenerate with the lightest neutralino ($\widetilde{\chi}_1^0$), the lightest and stable supersymmetric particle in the R-parity conserving supersymmetry. The current experimental bound on $\widetilde{t}_1$ mass in this scenario stands only around 200 GeV. For such a light $\widetilde{t}_1$, the heavier top squark ($\widetilde{t}_2$) can also be around the TeV scale. Moreover, the high value of the higgs ($h$) mass prefers the left and right handed top squarks to be highly mixed allowing the possibility of a considerable branching ratio for $\widetilde{t}_2 \to \widetilde{t}_1 h$ and $\widetilde{t}_2 \to \widetilde{t}_1 Z$. In this paper, we explore the above possibility together with the pair production of $\widetilde{t}_2$ $\widetilde{t}_2^*$ giving rise to the spectacular di-boson + missing transverse energy final state. For an approximately 1 TeV $\widetilde{t}_2$ and a few hundred GeV $\widetilde{t}_1$ the final state particles can be moderately boosted which encourages us to propose a novel search strategy employing the jet substructure technique to tag the boosted $h$ and $Z$. The reconstruction of the $h$ and $Z$ momenta also allows us to construct the stransverse mass $M_{T2}$ providing an additional efficient handle to fight the backgrounds. We show that a 4--5$\sigma$ signal can be observed at the 14 TeV LHC for $\sim$ 1 TeV $\widetilde{t}_2$ with 100 fb$^{-1}$ integrated luminosity.