A search for supersymmetry (SUSY) in events with large missing transverse momentum, jets, at least one hadronically decaying tau lepton and zero or one additional light leptons (electron/muon), has been performed using 20.3 fb −1 of proton-proton collision data at √ s = 8 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. No excess above the Standard Model background expectation is observed in the various signal regions and 95% confidence level upper limits on the visible cross section for new phenomena are set. The results of the analysis are interpreted in several SUSY scenarios, significantly extending previous limits obtained in the same final states. In the framework of minimal gauge-mediated SUSY breaking models, values of the SUSY breaking scale Λ below 63 TeV are excluded, independently of tan β. Exclusion limits are also derived for an mSUGRA/CMSSM model, in both the R-parity-conserving and R-parity-violating case. A further interpretation is presented in a framework of natural gauge mediation, in which the gluino is assumed to be the only light coloured sparticle and gluino masses below 1090 GeV are excluded. The ATLAS collaboration 37
IntroductionSupersymmetry (SUSY) [1][2][3][4][5] introduces a symmetry between fermions and bosons, resulting in a SUSY partner (sparticle) for each Standard Model (SM) particle, with identical mass and quantum numbers except a difference of half a unit of spin. As none of these sparticles have been observed with the same mass as their SM partners, SUSY must be a broken symmetry if realized in nature. Assuming R-parity conservation [6][7][8][9][10], sparticles are produced in pairs and then decay through cascades involving other sparticles until the lightest SUSY particle (LSP), which is stable, is produced. In many SUSY models tau leptons can provide an important signature for new physics. Naturalness arguments [11,12] suggest that the lightest third-generation sparticles should have masses of a few hundred GeV to protect the Higgs boson mass from quadratically divergent quantum corrections. Light sleptons could play a role in the co-annihilation of neutralinos in the early universe,-1 -
JHEP09(2014)103and, in particular, models with light tau sleptons (staus) are consistent with dark matter searches [13]. If squarks and gluinos, superpartners of quarks and gluons, 1 are in the LHC reach, their production rate may be dominant among SUSY processes. They could then decay in cascades involving tau leptons, high transverse momentum jets and missing transverse momentum from the LSP, which escapes undetected. More details about the various SUSY models considered in this paper are given in section 2. Furthermore, should SUSY or any other theory of physics Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) be discovered, independent studies of all three lepton flavours are necessary to investigate the coupling structure of the new physics, especially with regard to lepton universality. This paper reports on an inclusive search for SUSY particles produced via the strong i...