Search for electroweak production of supersymmetric particles in compressed mass spectra with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper reports on two ATLAS analyses searching for electroweak supersymmetric particles in compressed mass spectra, using machine learning and displaced track techniques, setting new exclusion limits up to 175 GeV.

Contribution

The study introduces novel search strategies for compressed supersymmetric spectra, including machine learning for background discrimination and displaced track analysis, extending exclusion limits beyond previous results.

Findings

Excluded chargino masses up to about 140 GeV

Excluded higgsino masses up to 175 GeV

Probed new parameter space not previously explored

Abstract

Two analyses searching for the production of supersymmetric particles through the electroweak interaction are presented: the chargino search, targeting the pair production of charginos decaying into W bosons and neutralinos, and the displaced track search, looking for charged tracks arising from the decays of higgsinos into pions. These searches target compressed phase spaces, where the mass difference between the next-to-lightest and lightest supersymmetric particle is relatively small. The searches use proton-proton collision data collected at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. In the chargino search, the targeted mass difference between charginos and neutralinos is close to the mass of the W boson. In such phase space, the chargino pair production is kinematically similar to the WW background, making the chargino signal experimentally challenging to be discriminated from the WW background. Machine learning techniques are adopted to separate the supersymmetric signal from the backgrounds. The results exclude chargino masses up to about 140 GeV for mass splittings down to about 100 GeV, superseding the previous results in particularly interesting regions where the chargino pair production could have hidden behind the looking-alike WW background. In the displaced track search, the mass difference between the produced sparticles and the lightest neutralinos goes down to 0.3 GeV. The experimental signature has a low momentum charged track with an origin displaced from the collision point. The results show that the analysis has the sensitivity to exclude different hypotheses for higgsino masses up to 175 GeV if no excess is observed in data. For lower masses, the larger signal cross-section allows to achieve higher significance for different mass splitting scenarios. All these signal hypotheses have not been probed by any existing analysis of LHC data.