Light Stop NLSPs at the Tevatron and LHC

David Shih; Yevgeny Kats

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Light Stop NLSPs at the Tevatron and LHC

Yevgeny Kats, David Shih

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology · Submitted 31 May 2011

abstract compiled · 2026-09-23 · no language-model review

The authors' main claim Focusing on the case of prompt decays, we simulate several existing Tevatron and LHC analyses that would be sensitive to this scenario, and find that they allow the stop to be as light as 150 GeV, mostly due to the large top production background.

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What the abstract itself states, as probabilities: claims first 0.03 · states limitation 0.66 · human participants 0.01 · controlled comparison 0.07 · randomized assignment 0.01 · states quantitative result 0.98 · compares with prior results 0.35 · mentions code or data availability 0.03.

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How light can the stop be given current experimental constraints? Can it still be lighter than the top? In this paper, we study this and related questions in the context of gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking, where a stop NLSP decays into a W, b and gravitino. Focusing on the case of prompt decays, we simulate several existing Tevatron and LHC analyses that would be sensitive to this scenario, and find that they allow the stop to be as light as 150 GeV, mostly due to the large top production background. With more data, the existing LHC analyses will be able to push the limit up to at least 180 GeV. We hope this work will motivate more dedicated experimental searches for this simple scenario, in which, for most purposes, the only free parameters are the stop mass and lifetime.

background contribution method result interpretation main claim

What the classifier reports for each sentence. The number is the probability it gave the label.
#	sentence	role	the authors' own work	states the main conclusion	strength
s0	How light can the stop be given current experimental constraints?	background 0.72	0.04	0.02	unclear 0.99
s1	Can it still be lighter than the top?	background 0.71	0.04	0.02	unclear 0.76
s2	In this paper, we study this and related questions in the context of gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking, where a stop NLSP decays into a W, b and gravitino.	contribution 0.96	0.66	0.04	asserted 0.95
s3	Focusing on the case of prompt decays, we simulate several existing Tevatron and LHC analyses that would be sensitive to this scenario, and find that they allow the stop to be as light as 150 GeV, mostly due to the large top production background.	result 0.99	0.94	0.77	asserted 1.00
s4	With more data, the existing LHC analyses will be able to push the limit up to at least 180 GeV.	result 0.78	0.61	0.18	hedged possibility 0.77
s5	We hope this work will motivate more dedicated experimental searches for this simple scenario, in which, for most purposes, the only free parameters are the stop mass and lifetime.	future work 1.00	0.09	0.07	hedged possibility 0.43

What kind of paper the classifier reports this is: simulation study 1.00 · evidence from simulation or computation 0.99.

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The paper

Original abstract

How light can the stop be given current experimental constraints? Can it still be lighter than the top? In this paper, we study this and related questions in the context of gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking, where a stop NLSP decays into a W, b and gravitino. Focusing on the case of prompt decays, we simulate several existing Tevatron and LHC analyses that would be sensitive to this scenario, and find that they allow the stop to be as light as 150 GeV, mostly due to the large top production background. With more data, the existing LHC analyses will be able to push the limit up to at least 180 GeV. We hope this work will motivate more dedicated experimental searches for this simple scenario, in which, for most purposes, the only free parameters are the stop mass and lifetime.

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References

Forward citations

Cited by 13 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

The Fate of Long-Lived Superparticles with Hadronic Decays after LHC Run 1
hep-ph 2015-03 accept novelty 6.0 of 10

Recasting seven LHC Run 1 searches onto long-lived gluinos, squarks, stops, and Higgsinos with hadronic decays yields exclusion coverage over the full mass-lifetime plane for many simplified spectra.
Fastlim: a fast LHC limit calculator
hep-ph 2014-02 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

Fastlim reconstructs LHC visible cross sections for SUSY signal regions by interpolating pre-computed efficiency and cross section tables over simplified event topologies, yielding conservative exclusion limits in sec...
LHC Coverage of RPV MSSM with Light Stops
hep-ph 2012-09 accept novelty 6.0 of 10

Recasting existing 7 TeV LHC searches onto RPV stop scenarios, the authors find stops in the natural mass range are excluded for LLE and light-lepton LQD couplings but largely unconstrained for UDD couplings and tau L...
(Light) Stop Signs
hep-ph 2012-05 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

Spin-correlation and rapidity-gap observables can distinguish a stealth stop from Standard Model top pairs, with spin correlation alone estimated to exclude a 200 GeV stop at 95% confidence with 20 inverse femtobarns ...
Stop the Top Background of the Stop Search
hep-ph 2012-03 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

Three new M_T2-style kinematic variables, especially M^W_T2, suppress the dileptonic top-pair background in the single-lepton stop search and improve the 8 TeV exclusion reach to about 650 to 700 GeV.

Show 8 more citing papers

Hide and Seek With Natural Supersymmetry at the LHC
hep-ph 2012-02 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

Natural supersymmetry with R-parity violation generically yields same-sign dileptons without large missing energy, and existing 2011 LHC searches already exclude gluinos below roughly 550 GeV.
Compressed electroweakino spectra at the LHC
hep-ph 2013-12 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

Monojet plus missing-energy searches, extended with soft-lepton bins, can probe compressed electroweakino spectra at the 14 TeV LHC, with reach set almost entirely by the assumed background systematic error.
Very boosted Higgs in gluon fusion
hep-ph 2013-12 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

The transverse-momentum spectrum of a boosted Higgs plus jet breaks the degeneracy between the top-loop and contact-term contributions to gluon fusion, giving indirect access to the Higgs-top coupling.
Excluding Electroweak Baryogenesis in the MSSM
hep-ph 2012-03 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

The light right-handed stop required by electroweak baryogenesis in the MSSM would raise gluon-fusion Higgs rates and suppress diphoton decays; combining 2012 ATLAS and CMS Higgs searches excludes that correlated patt...
NMSSM Higgs Benchmarks Near 125 GeV
hep-ph 2012-01 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

Twelve NMSSM benchmark points are constructed that yield a 125 GeV SM-like Higgs with sub-TeV stops, together with two-loop perturbativity bounds on the singlet coupling, some of which predict two-photon rates up to t...
SUSY, the Third Generation and the LHC
hep-ph 2011-10 accept novelty 5.0 of 10

A bottom-up effective-SUSY framework with only third-generation squarks and electroweakinos survives 1/fb LHC data across much of its natural parameter space, with 10/fb expected to be far more decisive.
The Status of GMSB After 1/fb at the LHC
hep-ph 2011-10 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

Reinterpreting 1/fb of LHC data in General Gauge Mediation, the authors map exclusion limits across all NLSP scenarios and identify where current searches are weakest.
A Non Standard Model Higgs at the LHC as a Sign of Naturalness
hep-ph 2011-12 conditional novelty 4.0 of 10

In natural SUSY the LHC Higgs should deviate from the Standard Model, and an enhanced 125 GeV Higgs signal would imply stops lighter than roughly 400 GeV.

How the literature uses it

34 arXiv papers cite this in 44 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 citing it · 24 sentences without a confident label

Uses its method or tool 1 paper

We find, using the methods of [ref] , that neither sets the expected limit due to tightened analysis cuts.

The Status of GMSB After 1/fb at the LHC · Stop NLSP (direct production) · 0.80

Uses its data or values 1 paper

In [ref] , it was estimated that two of the $35$ LHC analyses available at that time would be able to probe stops up to about $180$ GeV, if updated to 1/fb.

The Status of GMSB After 1/fb at the LHC · Stop NLSP (direct production) · 0.88

Cites it as support 2 papers

Direct searches for third family sparticles allow for stops as light as the top and SUSY can be natural [ref] .

A Non Standard Model Higgs at the LHC as a Sign of Naturalness · Introduction · 0.98
The existing LHC data do not exclude a light and long-lived stop [ref] .

On low-energy predictions of unification models inspired by F-theory · Discussion · 0.96

Cites it as background 16 papers

Ref. [ref] investigate a stop NLSP and a gravitino LSP scenario for the Tevatron as well as the LHC.

Probing Minimal Flavor Violation with Long-Lived Stops and Light Gravitinos at Hadron Colliders · Introduction · 0.89
Hiding stops at low masses has been investigated by many groups in the past [ref] .

Natural SUSY in Plain Sight · Introduction · 0.97
(In defining GGM, we will not discuss the Higgs sector in detail, but simply assume that $μ$ and $tanβ$ can be set freely.) A number of papers have studied both the Tevatron bounds and LHC projections [ref] , elaborating on and greatly extending the scope of the pioneering Tevatron-era work on gauge mediated phenomenology [ref] .

The Status of GMSB After 1/fb at the LHC · Introduction · 0.80

What it cites · 47 sentences without a confident label

Uses the method or tool of 11 papers

We have implemented the dilepton stop mass reconstruction algorithm of the CDF analysis [ref] (in a somewhat simplified way described in appendix [ref]).

Search for Pair Production of Supersymmetric Top Quarks in Dilepton Events from $p\bar{p}$ Collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 1.96 TeV · Stop mass reconstruction · 1.00
The intermediate step of decaying the stop NLSPs is done according to ([ref]) with our own software.[The authors will be willing to provide copies of the software, or parton-level event files produced with it, to any interested parties.] For the gravity-mediated stops that we use in the process of deriving limits from the CDF stop mass reconstruction procedure of [ref] in section [ref], the decay is performed by Pythia, after the desired spectra are created using SuSpect [ref] .

SuSpect: a Fortran Code for the Supersymmetric and Higgs Particle Spectrum in the MSSM · Simulation details · 0.95
Here we will only use the simple cuts which precede that procedure (the “selection 1” described in [ref] ).

Search for pair production of the scalar top quark in the electron-muon final state · Constraints from the Tevatron and the LHC · 0.87

Uses data or values from 5 papers

With these pairs in hand, we can approximately read off the corresponding $95%$ CL exclusion limits from figure 2 of [ref] .

Search for Pair Production of Supersymmetric Top Quarks in Dilepton Events from $p\bar{p}$ Collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 1.96 TeV · Stop mass reconstruction · 0.86
NNLO$_approx$+NNLL calculations give the $tt̅$ production cross section at the Tevatron as $σ_tt̅ = 6.30 ±0.19^+0.31_-0.23$ pb [ref] or $7.08^+0.20+0.36_-0.24-0.27$ pb [ref] .

Renormalization-Group Improved Predictions for Top-Quark Pair Production at Hadron Colliders · $tt̅$ and $^∗$ production cross sections · 0.98
NNLO$_approx$+NNLL calculations give the $tt̅$ production cross section at the Tevatron as $σ_tt̅ = 6.30 ±0.19^+0.31_-0.23$ pb [ref] or $7.08^+0.20+0.36_-0.24-0.27$ pb [ref] .

Next-to-next-to-leading soft-gluon corrections for the top quark cross section and transverse momentum distribution · $tt̅$ and $^∗$ production cross sections · 0.98

Compares with 1 paper

This is confirmed by table [ref] where we compare our results for stops in gravity-mediated scenarios with those obtained by CDF [ref] (after normalizing our predictions to the stop cross sections used by CDF).[The only exception is the $135$ GeV stop in the $b$-tagged channel where our result is about twice bigger.

Search for Pair Production of Supersymmetric Top Quarks in Dilepton Events from $p\bar{p}$ Collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 1.96 TeV · Simulation details · 1.00

Cites as background 7 papers

At the Tevatron, CDF [ref] and D0 [ref] have considered the situation in which the stop decays via a virtual chargino as →bℓ^+ν̃

Search for the lightest scalar top quark in events with two leptons in ppbar collisions at sqrt(s)=1.96 TeV · Searches for new physics · 0.86
At the Tevatron, CDF [ref] and D0 [ref] have considered the situation in which the stop decays via a virtual chargino as →bℓ^+ν̃

Search for the supersymmetric partner of the top quark in ppbar collisions at sqrt(s) = 1.96 TeV · Searches for new physics · 0.86
At the Tevatron, CDF [ref] and D0 [ref] have considered the situation in which the stop decays via a virtual chargino as →bℓ^+ν̃

Search for pair production of the scalar top quark in the electron-muon final state · Searches for new physics · 0.86

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