Related papers: Very Light Scalar Top Quarks at the LHC
Current searches for direct production of scalar top quarks, or stops, in supersymmetry focus on their decays into W boson + b quark + neutralino by way of top + neutralino and bottom + chargino. While the polarization of the top quark…
We study the production and decays of top squarks (stops) at the Tevatron collider in models of low-energy supersymmetry breaking. We consider the case where the lightest Standard Model (SM) superpartner is a light neutralino that…
Most supersymmetric models predict new particles within the reach of the next generation of colliders. For an understanding of the model structure and the mechanism(s) of electroweak symmetry breaking, it is important to know the masses of…
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…
Vector-like top partner plays a central role in many new physics models which attempt to address the hierarchy problem. The top partner is conventionally assumed to decay to a quark and a SM boson. However, it is also possible that the top…
Top partner searches are one of the key aspects of new physics analyses at the LHC. We correct an earlier statement that supersymmetric top searches based on decays to semileptonic tops are not promising. Reconstructing the direction of the…
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…
We investigate the phenomenological viability of a very light bottom squark, with a mass less than half of the Z boson mass. The decays of the Z and Higgs bosons to light sbottom pairs are, in a fairly model independent manner, strongly…
We examine the neutralino relic density in the presence of a light top squark, such as the one required for the realization of the electroweak baryogenesis mechanism, within the minimal supersymmetric standard model. We show that there are…
The large number of top quarks produced at the LHC and possible future hadron colliders allows to study rare decays of this particle. In many well motivated models of new physics, for example in non-minimal composite-Higgs models, the…
We consider light top squarks (stops) in the minimal supersymmetric Standard Model at the Large Hadron Collider. Here, we assume that the lightest neutralino is the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) and the lighter stop is the…
LHC searches for fermionic top partners $T$ focus on three decay topologies: $T\to bW$, $T\to tZ$, and $T\to th$. However, top partners may carry new conserved quantum numbers that forbid these decays. The simplest possibility is a…
Searches for new physics in the top quark sector are of great theoretical interest, yet some powerful avenues for discovery remain unexplored. We characterize the expected statistical power of the LHC dataset to constrain the single…
The precision determination of scalar top quark properties will play an important role at a future International Linear Collider (ILC). Recent and ongoing studies are discussed for different experimental topologies in the detector. First…
We investigate the implications of the Higgs rate measurements from Run 1 of the LHC for the mass of the light scalar top partner (stop) in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM). We focus on light stop masses, and we decouple the…
The results of a search for top squark (stop) pair production in final states with one isolated lepton, jets, and missing transverse momentum are reported. The analysis is performed with proton--proton collision data at $\sqrt{s} = 8$ TeV…
Stop squarks with a mass just above the top's and which decay to a nearly massless LSP are difficult to probe because of the large SM di-top background. Here we discuss search strategies which could be used to set more stringent bounds in…
Two of the most important parameters in supersymmetry are the masses of the stop and sbottom, the supersymmetric partners of the third generation quarks. A stop mass lighter than 1 TeV is favored theoretically, however, conventional…
Natural theories of the weak scale often include fermionic partners of the top quark. If the electroweak symmetry breaking sector contains scalars beyond a single Higgs doublet, then top partners can have sizable branching ratios to these…
We study possible theoretical deviations from SM in top quark physics which alter the decay properties of the top quark. Using effective filed theory techniques we parametrize the effects of potential NP of scales well above the electroweak…