The Search For Supersymmetry In Hadronic Final States Using Boosted Object Reconstruction

This thesis represents one of the most comprehensive and in-depth studies of the use of Lorentz-boosted hadronic final state systems in the search for signals of Supersymmetry conducted to date at the Large Hadron Collider. A thorough assessment is performed of the observables that provide enhanced sensitivity to new physics signals otherwise hidden under an enormous background of top quark pairs produced by Standard Model processes. This is complemented by an ingenious analysis optimization procedure that allowed for extending the reach of this analysis by hundreds of GeV in mass of these hypothetical new particles. Lastly, the combination of both deep, thoughtful physics analysis with the development of high-speed electronics for identifying and selecting these same objects is not only unique, but also revolutionary. The Global Feature Extraction system that the author played a critical role in bringing to fruition represents the first dedicated hardware device for selecting these Lorentz-boosted hadronic systems in real-time using state-of-the-art processing chips and embedded systems.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) operates at the highest energy scales ever artificially created in particle collision experiments with a center-of-mass energy √s = 13 TeV. In addition, the high luminosity allows the unique opportunity to probe the Standard Model at the electroweak scale and explore for rare signs of new physics beyond the Standard Model. The coupling of the third-generation top quark to the Higgs boson introduces large, quadratic, radiative corrections to the Higgs mass, requiring a significant amount of fine-tuning that results in a nearly perfect correction of the Higgs mass from the Planck scale to the observable electroweak scale. A possible solution to the naturalness problem proposes a collection of supersymmetric partners to the Standard Model particles with the mass of lightest particles at the electroweak scale: the gluino, the stop squarks, and the lightest supersymmetric particle. This thesis presents the results of a search for gluino pair production decaying via stop squarks to the lightest neutralino in hadronic final states using a total integrated luminosity 36.1 fb‒1 of data collected with the ATLAS detector in 2015 and 2016. This analysis considers a simplified supersymmetry model targeting extreme regions of the phase space with large missing transverse momentum, multiple b-tagged jets, and several energetic jets. No excess is observed and limits on the gluino mass are set at the 95% CL, greatly extending the previous results in 2012 from 1.4 TeV to 1.9 TeV. The increase of the LHC luminosity also poses challenges to the current trigger system in the ATLAS detector necessitating planned upgrades. One of the upgrades for the trigger system is the Global Feature Extractor (gFEX) which aims to recover lost efficiency in boosted hadronic final states by identifying large radius jets produced by top quarks, Higgs, Z and W bosons which are critical for future ATLAS physics programs. This module is a unique board with 3 processor FPGAs for data processing and an embedded multi-processor system-on-chip for slow-control and monitoring. This thesis will also describe the work on developing this hardware and several physics upgrade studies on the trigger performance.

After an extensive overview of the Standard Model and of the theory and phenomenology of Supersymmetry, this book describes the recent development of the ATLAS Particle Flow algorithm, a hadronic reconstruction technique aiming at enhancing the sensitivity of the experiment to new physics through the combination of the information from different ATLAS sub-detectors. The first ever ATLAS strong SUSY search exploiting this technique is also described, reporting the results and exclusion limits obtained using the complete proton-proton collision dataset recorded by the ATLAS experiment during the second Run of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

This PhD thesis documents two of the highest-profile searches for supersymmetry performed at the ATLAS experiment using up to 80/fb of proton-proton collision data at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV delivered by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) during its Run 2 (2015-2018). The signals of interest feature a high multiplicity of jets originating from the hadronisation of b-quarks and large missing transverse momentum, which constitutes one of the most promising final state signatures for discovery of new phenomena at the LHC. The first search is focused on the strong production of a pair of gluinos, with each gluino decaying into a neutralino and a top-antitop-quark pair or a bottom-antibottom-quark pair. The second search targets the pair production of higgsinos, with each higgsino decaying into a gravitino and a Higgs boson, which in turn is required to decay into a bottom-antibottom-quark pair. Both searches employ state-of-the-art experimental techniques and analysis strategies at the LHC, resulting in some of the most restrictive bounds available to date on the masses of the gluino,neutralino, and higgsino in the context of the models explored.

The project reported here was a search for new super symmetric particles in proton-proton collisions at the LHC. It has produced some of the world’s best exclusion limits on such new particles. Furthermore, dedicated simulation studies and data analyses have also yielded essential input to the upgrade activities of the CMS collaboration, both for the Phase-1 pixel detector upgrade and for the R&D studies in pursuit of a Phase-2 end cap calorimeter upgrade.

After an extensive overview of the Standard Model and of the theory and phenomenology of Supersymmetry, this book describes the recent development of the ATLAS Particle Flow algorithm, a hadronic reconstruction technique aiming at enhancing the sensitivity of the experiment to new physics through the combination of the information from different ATLAS sub-detectors. The first ever ATLAS strong SUSY search exploiting this technique is also described, reporting the results and exclusion limits obtained using the complete proton-proton collision dataset recorded by the ATLAS experiment during the second Run of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

This thesis focuses on searches for squarks with the ATLAS detector in "compressed" scenarios where the scalar top is very close in mass to the lightest supersymmetric particle. These models are theoretically appealing because the presence of a quasi-degenerate scalar top enhances the self-annihilation cross-section of the lightest supersymmetric particle, acting therefore as a regulator of the dark matter relic density. Two main analyses are presented: the first is a search for scalar tops decaying to charm quarks. The identification of jets originating from the charm quark is very challenging due to its short lifetime. The calibration of tools for charm-tagging has paved the way to measuring the decay of the Higgs boson to pairs of charm quarks. The second analysis presented is the development of a novel technique for reconstructing low momentum b-hadrons. This tool has enabled the ATLAS collaboration to explore topologies that were previously inaccessible.

This thesis contains new research in both experimental and theoretical particle physics, making important contributions in each. Two analyses of collision data from the ATLAS experiment at the LHC are presented, as well as two phenomenological studies of heavy coloured resonances that could be produced at the LHC. The first data analysis was the measurement of top quark-antiquark production with a veto on additional jet activity. As the first detector-corrected measurement of jet activity in top-antitop events it played an important role in constraining the theoretical modelling, and ultimately reduced these uncertainties for ATLAS's other top-quark measurements by a factor of two. The second data analysis was the measurement of Z+2jet production and the observation of the electroweak vector boson fusion (VBF) component. As the first observation of VBF at a hadron collider, this measurement demonstrated new techniques to reliably extract VBF processes and paved the way for future VBF Higgs measurements. The first phenomenological study developed a new technique for identifying the colour of heavy resonances produced in proton-proton collisions. As a by-product of this study an unexpected and previously unnoticed correlation was discovered between the probability of correctly identifying a high-energy top and the colour structure of the event it was produced in. The second phenomenological study explored this relationship in more detail, and could have important consequences for the identification of new particles that decay to top quarks.