Contributor info: Dr Mohammad Mahdi Altakach

Mohammad Mahdi Altakach, Sabine Kraml, Andre Lessa, Sahana Narasimha, Timothée Pascal, Théo Reymermier, Wolfgang Waltenberger

SciPost Phys. 16, 101 (2024) · published 10 April 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

Electroweak-inos, superpartners of the electroweak gauge and Higgs bosons, play a special role in supersymmetric theories. Their intricate mixing into chargino and neutralino mass eigenstates leads to a rich phenomenology, which makes it difficult to derive generic limits from LHC data. In this paper, we present a global analysis of LHC constraints for promptly decaying electroweak-inos in the context of the minimal supersymmetric standard model, exploiting the SMODELS software package. Combining up to 16 ATLAS and CMS searches for which electroweak-ino efficiency maps are available in SMODELS, we study which combinations maximise the sensitivity in different regions of the parameter space, how fluctuations in the data in individual analyses influence the global likelihood, and what is the resulting exclusion power of the combination compared to the analysis-by-analysis approach.

Mohammad Mahdi Altakach, Sabine Kraml, Andre Lessa, Sahana Narasimha, Timothée Pascal, Wolfgang Waltenberger

SciPost Phys. 15, 185 (2023) · published 6 November 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

We present version 2.3 of SModelS, a public tool for the fast reinterpretation of LHC searches for new physics on the basis of simplified-model results. The main new features are a database update with the latest available experimental results for full Run 2 luminosity, comprising in particular a large variety of electroweak-ino searches, and the ability to combine likelihoods from different analyses. This enables statistically more rigorous constraints and opens the way for global likelihood analyses for LHC searches. The physics impact is demonstrated for the electroweak-ino sector of the minimal supersymmetric standard model.

Mohammad Mahdi Altakach, Jonathan Mark Butterworth, Tomáš Ježo, Michael Klasen, Ingo Schienbein

SciPost Phys. Core 6, 014 (2023) · published 17 March 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

The sensitivity of particle-level fiducial cross section measurements from ATLAS, CMS and LHCb to a leptophobic top-colour model is studied. The model has previously been the subject of resonance searches. Here we compare it directly to state-of-the-art predictions for Standard Model top quark production and also take into account next-to-leading order predictions for the new physics signal. We make use of the Contur framework to evaluate the sensitivity of the current measurements, first under the default Contur assumption that the measurement and the SM exactly coincide, and then using the full SM theory calculation for $t\bar{t}$ at next-to-leading and next-to-next-to-leading order as the background model. We derive exclusion limits, discuss the differences between these approaches, and compare to the limits from resonance searches by ATLAS and CMS.

A. Buckley, J. M. Butterworth, L. Corpe, M. Habedank, D. Huang, D. Yallup, M. Altakach, G. Bassman, I. Lagwankar, J. Rocamonde, H. Saunders, B. Waugh, G. Zilgalvis

SciPost Phys. Core 4, 013 (2021) · published 20 May 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

Measurements at particle collider experiments, even if primarily aimed at understanding Standard Model processes, can have a high degree of model independence, and implicitly contain information about potential contributions from physics beyond the Standard Model. The Contur package allows users to benefit from the hundreds of measurements preserved in the Rivet library to test new models against the bank of LHC measurements to date. This method has proven to be very effective in several recent publications from the Contur team, but ultimately, for this approach to be successful, the authors believe that the Contur tool needs to be accessible to the wider high energy physics community. As such, this manual accompanies the first user-facing version: Contur v2. It describes the design choices that have been made, as well as detailing pitfalls and common issues to avoid. The authors hope that with the help of this documentation, external groups will be able to run their own Contur studies, for example when proposing a new model, or pitching a new search.