Searching for Direct Stop Production in Hadronic Top Data at the LHC

Abstract

We argue that evidence can be uncovered for stops between 300-600 GeV in 5 fb^-1 of 7 TeV proton-proton collisions if they decay into top quarks and light neutral particles. We also show that with 20 fb^-1 of 8 TeV running, discovery or exclusion can be made in large regions of parameter space. Events with a fully hadronic top/anti-top pair and a pair of invisible decay products can be identified with the top-tagging of a fat jet, a single b-tag, a missing transverse energy cut, as well as other kinematic cuts to reduce backgrounds with real top quarks in them. Such cuts obliterate the background suggesting discovery can be made with a handful of events.