A search for top-squark pair production, in final states containing a top quark, a charm quark and missing transverse momentum, using the 139 fb${}^{-1}$ of $pp$ collision data collected by the ATLAS detector

Abstract

This paper presents a search for top-squark pair production in final states with a top quark, a charm quark and missing transverse momentum. The data were collected with the ATLAS detector during LHC Run 2 and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 139fb${}^{-1}$ of proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV. The analysis is motivated by an extended Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model featuring a non-minimal flavour violation in the second- and third-generation squark sector. The top squark in this model has two possible decay modes, either ${\tilde{t}}_1\to c{\tilde{\chi }}_1^0$ or ${\tilde{t}}_1\to t{\tilde{\chi }}_1^0$, where the ${\tilde{\chi }}_1^0$ is undetected. The analysis is optimised assuming that both of the decay modes are equally probable, leading to the most likely final state of $tc+E_{\text{T}}^{\text{miss}}$. Good agreement is found between the Standard Model expectation and the data in the search regions. Exclusion limits at 95% CL are obtained in the $m({\tilde{t}}_1)$ vs $m({\tilde{\chi }}_1^0)$ plane and, in addition, limits on the branching ratio of the ${\tilde{t}}_1\to t{\tilde{\chi }}_1^0$ decay as a function of $m({\tilde{t}}_1)$ are also produced. Top-squark masses of up to 800 GeV are excluded for scenarios with light neutralinos, and top-squark masses up to 600 GeV are excluded in scenarios where the neutralino and the top squark are almost mass degenerate.

arXiv comment48 pages in total, author list starting page 31, 10 figures, 5 tables, published on Journal of High Energy Physics. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/SUSY-2019-23/

References in corpus (26)

• The automated computation of tree-level and next-to-leading order differential cross sections, and their matching to parton shower simulations
• The anti-k_t jet clustering algorithm
• An Introduction to PYTHIA 8.2
• FastJet user manual
• A general framework for implementing NLO calculations in shower Monte Carlo programs: the POWHEG BOX
• Parton distributions for the LHC Run II
• Event generation with SHERPA 1.1
• Herwig++ Physics and Manual
• Parton distributions with LHC data
• Top++: a program for the calculation of the top-pair cross-section at hadron colliders
• Herwig 7.0 / Herwig++ 3.0 Release Note
• Event Generation with Sherpa 2.2
• Measuring masses of semi-invisibly decaying particles pair produced at hadron colliders
• Vector boson production at hadron colliders: a fully exclusive QCD calculation at NNLO
• Two-loop soft anomalous dimensions for single top quark associated production with a W- or H-
• Single-top hadroproduction in association with a W boson
• Top-pair production at hadron colliders with next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic soft-gluon resummation
• Next-to-next-to-leading-order collinear and soft gluon corrections for t-channel single top quark production
• NNLL resummation for s-channel single top quark production
• Stop Production at Hadron Colliders
• Squark and gluino hadroproduction
• HistFitter software framework for statistical data analysis
• Supersymmetric top and bottom squark production at hadron colliders
• Evaluation of three methods for calculating statistical significance when incorporating a systematic uncertainty into a test of the background-only hypothesis for a Poisson process
• Reweighting QCD matrix-element and parton-shower calculations
• Flavour-violating decays of mixed top-charm squarks at the LHC