Mono-b events from single stop production at the HL-LHC and HE-LHC

Abstract

Top-squarks (stop) play an important role in SUSY naturalness. The stop pair production is considered as the most effective way to search for stop at the LHC. However, the collider signature of stop pair production is usually characterized by $t\bar{t}$ plus missing transverse energy, which is also predicted in many other non-supersymmetric models. On the other hand, the single stop production via the electroweak interaction can provide some distinctive signatures, and thus will help to confirm the existence of the stop. In this paper, we investigate the observability of the mono-$b$ events from the single stop production process $pp\to {\tilde{t}}_1{\tilde{\chi }}_1^{-}\to b+E{/}_T$ in a simplified MSSM framework where the higgsinos and stops are the only sparticles at the HL-LHC and HE-LHC. We find that the stop mass and the higgsino mass may be probed up to about 1.6 TeV and 550 GeV at $5\sigma$ level at the HE-LHC with the integrated luminosity $\mathcal{L}=15{\text{ab}}^{-1}$. We also present the $2\sigma$ exclusion limits of the stop mass at the HL-LHC and HE-LHC.

Comments: 14 pages, 5 figures. Discussions and references added, version accepted by Nucl. Phys. B