Pith. Sign in

REVIEW

Search for squarks and gluinos in events with jets and missing transverse energy using 2.1 fb-1 of ppbar collision data at sqrt(s)=1.96 TeV

PaperPDF from arXiv

data files

ReviewThe objections and verdict, as JSON Paper breakdownThe authors' claims, conditions and measurements, as JSON Signed receiptProof this review has not been altered
X Bluesky LinkedIn Reddit Hacker News
D0 Collaboration: V. Abazov, et al

High Energy Physics - Experiment · Submitted 21 Dec 2007 · 23 references

Pith's verdict: A careful, conservatively quoted update of D0's squark/gluino search: seven times the data, one real acceptance change, and limits that honestly expose their dependence on the theory cross section.

T0 · AI review

How this review was made: An AI referee (selfhosted/deepseek-v4.1-flash) read the paper on November 11, 2026 and answered a fixed list of questions about it. T0 is the starting level every paper gets. The levels describe how deeply Pith has checked the paper, never the authors.

  1. T0 AI review An AI read the paper and answered a fixed list of questions.
  2. T1 Audit Automatic checks that the references and files the paper relies on exist and match.
  3. T2 Compute The paper's code or calculations re-run with the same results.
  4. T3 Formal statement The claims written out in a formal math language a computer can read.
  5. T4 Proof Those claims proved, and the proof checked by computer.

How Pith checks papers →

· 1 major objection · 10 minor · Ask about this paper · The compiled record · Read the full review →
Challenge this review Comment (0) Read on arXiv ↗
Cite ▾
arXiv ID0712.3805 (version 2)
Pith ID3TIOHGMD, Pith's permanent record of this paper and its review
CitationD0 Collaboration: V. Abazov, et al. "Search for squarks and gluinos in events with jets and missing transverse energy using 2.1 fb-1 of ppbar collision data at sqrt(s)=1.96 TeV." arXiv:0712.3805 (2007). https://pith.science/paper/3TIOHGMD
Cite this reviewBibTeX for Pith's review of this paper
Claim paper

Why Pith says this

Highlight any text to comment on it.

Referee report

How Pith checks papers → · Full audit of this paper →

The paper

The paper claims

Using 2.1 inverse femtobarns of Tevatron data, the D0 experiment finds no squarks or gluinos and sets 95% confidence lower mass limits of 379 GeV (squark) and 308 GeV (gluino) in a specific minimal-supergravity scenario.

The reading

The paper asks whether the superpartners of quarks and gluons — squarks and gluinos — are light enough to be produced copiously at the Tevatron, where they would leave events with several jets and large missing transverse energy carried off by an undetected lightest neutralino. D0 analyzes 2.1 fb$^{-1}$ of $pbar p$ collisions at $sqrt{s}=1.96$ TeV with three overlapping selections tuned to different mSUGRA benchmark points: an acoplanar two-jet analysis, a three-jet analysis, and a four-jet gluino analysis. The observed counts agree with standard-model expectations in all three, so the result is a set of excluded regions rather than a discovery. Within minimal supergravity with $tan beta = 3$, $A_0 = 0$, and $mu < 0$, squarks below 379 GeV and gluinos below 308 GeV are excluded at 95% confidence, improving the collaboration's previous bounds by 54 GeV and 67 GeV. The value to a reader is the size of the step: a sevenfold larger dataset converts a search that was grazing the electroweak-scale squark region into one that pushes the gluino past 300 GeV.

What carries the argument

The machinery is a set of three cut-based selections on jets plus missing transverse energy, combined through the modified frequentist $CL_s$ method. All events must pass a common preselection: $E_T^{miss} geq 40$ GeV, at least two central jets with $p_T geq 35$ GeV and electromagnetic fraction below 0.95, jet-track confirmation $CPF0 geq 0.75$ against the best primary vertex, acoplanarity below $165^circ$, and azimuthal separation of the missing energy from the leading jets ($geq 90^circ$ and $geq 50^circ$) to suppress mismeasured multijet events. The three analyses then differ in jet multiplicity, trigger, and the final $H_T$ and $E_T^{miss}$ thresholds, which were optimized by minimizing the expected cross-section upper limit. Signal efficiencies are obtained by running full geant3 detector simulation of pythia-generated squark and gluino events, with masses from suspect and decay tables from sdecay, and the production rates come from next-to-leading-order prospino calculations. The QCD background is not simulated; it is fitted from the low-$E_T^{miss}$ data after subtracting standard-model processes and extrapolated above the cut.

Extended reading notes

Core claim

No excess of events with jets and missing transverse energy is seen in 2.1 fb$^{-1}$ of D0 data. The three selections observe 11, 9, and 20 events against standard-model expectations of $11.1$, $10.7$, and $17.7$; combining the seven independent overlap categories gives 31 events observed versus $32.6 pm 1.7(stat.)^{+9.0}_{-5.8}(syst.)$ expected. Interpreting the null result as mass limits, the paper quotes 95% C.L. lower bounds of 379 GeV on the squark mass and 308 GeV on the gluino mass under the most conservative signal cross-section hypothesis, with the nominal cross section giving 392 GeV and 327 GeV and the maximal one giving 406 GeV and 349 GeV. For the special case $m_{tilde q} = m_{tilde g}$, masses below 390 GeV are excluded conservatively, 408 GeV nominally, and 427 GeV maximally. The limits are stated strictly inside minimal supergravity with $tan beta = 3$, $A_0 = 0$, $mu < 0$, and stops are not considered; the quoted squark mass is the average over the other squark flavours.

Load-bearing premise

The mass limits are only as trustworthy as the assumed next-to-leading-order squark and gluino production rates, and the paper itself shows those rates carry 15 to 60 percent uncertainty from the gluon distribution at high momentum fraction, which alone moves the gluino limit from 308 to 349 GeV.

Editorial extensions

If this is right

  • Any strongly produced supersymmetric particle with a squark mass below 379 GeV or a gluino mass below 308 GeV is excluded in the stated mSUGRA slice, so model builders working there must raise the mass scale or leave that corner.
  • The sevenfold increase in dataset moved the gluino limit by 67 GeV without any change in analysis strategy, showing that at the Tevatron the limit was statistics-limited rather than technique-limited.
  • Because no veto is placed on hadronically decaying taus, the quoted limits should survive, with reduced efficiency, at larger values of $tan beta$ where tau-rich cascades become common.
  • The exclusion in the $(m_0, m_{1/2})$ plane extends the reach of the LEP2 chargino and slepton searches for $m_0$ between 70 and 300 GeV and $m_{1/2}$ between 125 and 165 GeV, though the LEP2 Higgs limits remain stronger in pure mSUGRA.

Reading between the lines

Editorial extensions of the paper, not claims the author makes directly.

  • The number that actually moves between the conservative and nominal hypotheses is set by the gluon parton distribution at high $x$, not by the detector; a future global fit that shrinks that uncertainty would shift these limits by tens of GeV without any new data.
  • Because the three selections are combined as seven exclusive overlap categories, the quoted combined limit is only as coherent as the correlation model for the shared systematic uncertainties, chiefly jet energy scale and luminosity.
  • A natural cross-check is to ask what these selections would have seen at the LHC's higher centre-of-mass energy; the same jets-plus-missing-energy topology at $sqrt{s}=7$ or $8$ TeV reaches squark masses far above 1 TeV, which is why this Tevatron result reads as a closing chapter rather than an opening one.
  • The absence of a stop-specific selection means the quoted squark limit does not constrain the scalar top, which in many mSUGRA corners is the lightest coloured superpartner and could sit well below 379 GeV undetected here.
Original abstract

A data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 2.1 fb-1 collected by the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider was analyzed to search for squarks and gluinos produced in ppbar collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 1.96 TeV. No evidence for the production of such particles was observed in topologies involving jets and missing transverse energy, and 95% C.L. lower limits of 379 GeV and 308 GeV were set on the squark and gluino masses, respectively, within the framework of minimal supergravity with tan(beta)=3, A0=0, and mu<0. The corresponding previous limits are improved by 54 GeV and 67 GeV.

The compiled record

The paper's own sentences, arranged, kept beside the review and separate from it. Each label is drawn from a closed vocabulary; the number beside it is the probability the classifier gave that label. Numbers in the tables are the authors', checked by code. No sentence in this record was written by a model.

Compiled by classifier-1.13-20260917 via OpenRouter, question bank abstract-p1-20260923, 2026-09-23: 1 request, 3,177 input tokens, $0.0001 reported.

What the abstract itself states, as probabilities: claims first 0.04 · states limitation 0.29 · human participants 0.02 · controlled comparison 0.10 · randomized assignment 0.01 · states quantitative result 0.99 · compares with prior results 0.97 · mentions code or data availability 0.02.

The abstract, sentence by sentence

arXiv listing abstract v2. Results and the main claim are underlined; .

A data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 2.1 fb-1 collected by the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider was analyzed to search for squarks and gluinos produced in ppbar collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 1.96 TeV. No evidence for the production of such particles was observed in topologies involving jets and missing transverse energy, and 95% C.L. lower limits of 379 GeV and 308 GeV were set on the squark and gluino masses, respectively, within the framework of minimal supergravity with tan(beta)=3, A0=0, and mu<0. The corresponding previous limits are improved by 54 GeV and 67 GeV.

background contribution method result interpretation main claim

What the classifier reports for each sentence. The number is the probability it gave the label.
#sentencerolethe authors' own workstates the main conclusionstrength
s0 A data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 2.1 fb-1 collected by the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider was analyzed to search for squarks and gluinos produced in ppbar collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 1.96 TeV. method 0.84 0.95 0.03 asserted 0.97
s1 No evidence for the production of such particles was observed in topologies involving jets and missing transverse energy, and 95% C.L. lower limits of 379 GeV and 308 GeV were set on the squark and gluino masses, respectively, within the framework of minimal supergravity with tan(beta)=3, A0=0, and mu<0. result 1.00 0.97 0.94 asserted 1.00
s2 The corresponding previous limits are improved by 54 GeV and 67 GeV. result 0.58 0.66 0.08 asserted 1.00

What kind of paper the classifier reports this is: empirical study 1.00 · evidence from analysis of existing data 0.52.

What was examined, and what was not

sources read
  • arXiv listing abstract v2
not examined
  • full text
  • figures and tables
  • references and citing sentences
  • relations to other papers
levels run
  • P abstract
not run
  • S sections
  • T body sentences
  • C citations
  • R cross-paper relations

Every quoted sentence on this record is the authors'. Every label is from Pith's closed vocabulary, with the probability shown beside it. Every number in the measurements table is the authors', checked by code. Record as JSON

Figures
Figure 1. FIG. 1: Distributions of
Figure 2. FIG. 2: For tan
Figure 3. FIG. 3: In the gluino and squark mass plane, excluded regions
Figure 4. FIG. 4: In the (

Figures reproduced from arXiv:0712.3805 by the authors.

References
How later papers used it

56 later papers cite it

Evidence: substantial. 56 of the citing papers share no author with it, and 17 of those carry a confident label from Pith's citation classifier.

Pith read 26 of the 73 citing sentences, choosing only those whose citation markers point at this paper alone, and wrote the paraphrases from them. The summary, the counts, the evidence level, the links and the quotes come from code; the summary counts the papers listed below. A later paper is listed under a label when Pith's citation classifier gives one of its sentences that label at probability 0.8 or more (0.95 for support), Pith's reading finds that the citing paper itself did it, and a second check confirms the paraphrase against the sentence. This section lists uses only. It does not list criticism or disagreement, so their absence here says nothing about how the paper has been received. Papers that share an author with this one are listed apart, under "By the same authors". A quote is the citing authors' own sentence, shown when their paper's licence is CC BY, CC BY-SA or CC0. JSON

Uses its method or tool 1 paper
Uses its data or values 6 of 11 papers with this label
Compares with it 2 of 6 papers with this label
How the literature uses it

50 arXiv papers cite this in 66 sentences

Each citing sentence is taken from the citing paper's LaTeX source and typed by Pith's classifier. A label appears at probability 0.8 or more (0.95 for support), a contest at 0.7 or more; the quoted words are the citing authors'. How each label was checked · JSON

Papers whose main result relates to this one's

Found among the papers closest to this one by title and main claim. Pith's classifier compared each pair's main results and a second model family confirmed the relation; checked against two further families, shown conflicts agreed 118 times in 120 and shown same results 218 times in 239. The quoted sentence is the other paper's main claim.

States the same result 1 paper

Papers citing it · 39 sentences without a confident label

Uses its method or tool 1 paper
Uses its data or values 11 papers
  • Thus far, lower limits on $$ and $$ are provided by Tevatron (CDF and D0 collaboration [ref] ) and an absolute lower limit of $379$ and $308$, respectively, for the masses of squarks and the gluino in the mSUGRA framework ($A_0 = 0, μ< 0, tanβ= 3$) has been quoted.

    Higher-order soft corrections to squark hadro-production · Numerical Results · 0.84

  • We obtained restrictions on the squark and gluino sectors arising from the null result of the D0 multijet plus missing energy search [ref] .

    Dark Matter in the MSSM · Tevatron Constraints · 0.94

  • Based on an integrated luminosity of 2.1 , DØ excluded the domain shown in Fig. [ref], from which lower limits of 379 and 308 GeV were derived for the squark and gluino masses, respectively, as well as a lower limit of 390 GeV if $m_q̃=m_g̃$ [ref] .

    Searches for Supersymmetry at High-Energy Colliders · Searches at the Tevatron · 0.99

Compares with it 4 papers
  • The observed event count was found to be consistent with the SM background estimates and the exclusion limits at 95% C.L. were set in the \(M()\) vs \(M()\) plane as shown in Fig. [ref] together with a published analogous analysis from [ref] .

    Beyond the Standard Model Physics Searches at the Tevatron · SUSY Searches at the Tevatron · 0.99

  • The results reproduce the shape and scale of the $$ and $H_T$ distributions published by the $$ collaboration in [ref] for 1fb$^-1$.

    Searching for Directly Decaying Gluinos at the Tevatron · Backgrounds · 0.98

  • Here we see that there are a significant number of models with first/second generation squarks masses below $∼300$ GeV, , well below the limits usually quoted from Tevatron squark searches [ref] .

    Supersymmetry Without Prejudice · Flat Priors · 0.87

Cites it as support 1 paper
Cites it as background 8 papers
  • At present, the jets + $$ searches at the Fermilab Tevatron are based upon the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) and look for production of gluinos ($g̃$) and squarks ($q̃$), the supersymmetric partners of gluons and quarks, respectively [ref] .

    Searching for Directly Decaying Gluinos at the Tevatron · Introduction · 0.90

  • Under the assumption of $R$-parity [ref] conservation, searches for SUSY particles at the fermilab Tevatron [ref] and the CERN LHC [ref] have focused on event signatures with energetic hadronic jets and leptons from the decays of pair-produced squarks $$ and gluinos $$.

    Search for supersymmetry with razor variables in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV · Introduction · 0.93

  • Experimental searches for $R$-parity [ref] conserving SUSY at the Tevatron [ref] and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) [ref] have focused on signatures combining energetic hadronic jets and leptons from the decays of pair-produced squarks and gluinos, with large missing transverse energy () from the two weakly interacting lightest, neutral superpartners (LSPs) produced in separate decay chains.

    Inclusive search for supersymmetry using the razor variables in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV · Introduction · 0.97

Discussion

Disagree with the review, or know something it missed? Leave a comment, highlight any passage above to comment on it, or challenge this review formally.