Richard Nickerson

Abstract:

A search for new particles that decay into top quark pairs (ttbar) is performed with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC using an integrated luminosity of 4.7 fb^-1 of proton-proton (pp) collision data collected at a center-of-mass energy sqrt(s)=7 TeV. In the ttbar --> WbWb decay, the lepton plus jets final state is used, where one W boson decays leptonically and the other hadronically. The ttbar system is reconstructed using both small-radius and large-radius jets, the latter being supplemented by a jet substructure analysis. A search for local excesses in the number of data events compared to the Standard Model expectation in the ttbar invariant mass spectrum is performed. No evidence for a ttbar resonance is found and 95% credibility-level limits on the production rate are determined for massive states predicted in two benchmark models. The upper limits on the cross section times branching ratio of a narrow Z' resonance range from 5.1 pb for a boson mass of 0.5 TeV to 0.03 pb for a mass of 3 TeV. A narrow leptophobic topcolor Z' resonance with a mass below 1.74 TeV is excluded. Limits are also derived for a broad color-octet resonance with Gamma/m = 15.3%. A Kaluza-Klein excitation of the gluon in a Randall-Sundrum model is excluded for masses below 2.07 TeV.

Abstract:

Recent studies have highlighted the potential of jet substructure techniques to identify the hadronic decays of boosted heavy particles. These studies all rely upon the assumption that the internal substructure of jets generated by QCD radiation is well understood. In this article, this assumption is tested on an inclusive sample of jets recorded with the ATLAS detector in 2010, which corresponds to 35 pb^-1 of pp collisions delivered by the LHC at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV. In a subsample of events with single pp collisions, measurementes corrected for detector efficiency and resolution are presented with full systematic uncertainties. Jet invariant mass, kt splitting scales and n-subjettiness variables are presented for anti-kt R = 1.0 jets and Cambridge-Aachen R = 1.2 jets. Jet invariant-mass spectra for Cambridge-Aachen R = 1.2 jets after a splitting and filtering procedure are also presented. Leading-order parton-shower Monte Carlo predictions for these variables are found to be broadly in agreement with data. The dependence of mean jet mass on additional pp interactions is also explored.