Refining light stop exclusion limits with $W^+W^-$ cross sections

Abstract

If light supersymmetric top (stop) quarks are produced at the LHC and decay via on- or off-shell $W$-bosons they can be expected to contribute to a precision $W^+W^-$ cross section measurement. Using the latest results of the CMS experiment, we revisit constraints on the stop quark production and find that this measurement can exclude portions of the parameter space not probed by dedicated searches. In particular we can exclude light top squarks up to 230~GeV along the line separating three- and four-body decays, $\tilde{t}_1 \to \tilde{\chi}_1^0 W^{(*)} b$. We also study the exclusion limits in the case when the branching ratio for these decays is reduced and we show significant improvement over previously existing limits.