Aachen 2019 – scientific programme

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 81: Supersymmetrie II

T 81.2: Talk

Thursday, March 28, 2019, 16:15–16:30, S07

Signal Optimisation Strategies for Direct Pair Production of Scalar Tau Leptons with the ATLAS Detector in Run 2 — •Clara Leitgeb, Alexander Mann, and Ferdinand Krieter — Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Supersymmetry is a promising extension of the Standard Model of particle physics. The direct pair production of scalar tau leptons (staus) and their subsequent decay into a tau lepton and the lightest neutralino is searched for with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Because of the very low expected cross section, a search for this process in the first run of the LHC at 8 TeV center-of-mass energy could hardly reach any sensitivity. But the increased center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV in run 2 results in a higher cross section for this process. Together with the large integrated luminosity of 140 fb⁻¹ this significantly improves the prospects for the detection of stau pairs. Furthermore, the identification of tau leptons has been improved in run 2. However, there is also an increase of the cross sections of some Standard Model background processes. In addition, the trigger selection becomes more difficult due to the higher instantaneous luminosity and pile-up.

In this talk, the search for direct stau production with the full dataset recorded by ATLAS at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV will be presented. The main focus will be on the design of optimal signal regions, for which a cut-and-count approach is used in two distinct regions of phase space.