Author: Francesca Consiglia Ungaro

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

Zusammenfassung: The elementary particles composing matter and their interactions are described by the Standard Model of particle physics. The Standard Model of particle physics enabled predictions that were experimentally verified and has been confirmed throughout the past decades by data. Nevertheless, there are several theoretical reasons not to consider it as the ultimate theory.The strongest motivation to expect Physics beyond the Standard Model is the hierarchy problem. The radiative corrections to the mass of the Higgs boson grow quadratically with the square of the energy scale at which the Standard Model is considered to be valid. As a result, the parameters of the Standard Model need to be fine-tuned in order for the mass of the Higgs boson to acquire the value experimentally measured, despite the possibly large corrections.Supersymmetry is a promising theory extending the Standard Model which solves many of its shortcomings, including the hierarchy problem. Supersymmetry postulates a new fermion-boson symmetry resulting in the introduction of new particles, called superpartners, with the same quantum numbers and masses as the Standard Model particles, except for the spin, differing by half a unit. This new symmetry enables a cancellation of the radiative corrections due to the Standard Model particles with the corrections due to the newly introduced superpartners, contributing with opposite sign. Since no superpartners with the same mass as the Standard Model particles have been observed, Supersymmetry must be broken to allow the superpartners to have a mass different from the mass of the corresponding Standard Model particles.In the minimal version of Supersymmetry in terms of new particles, the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, the hierarchy problem can still be solved with a moderate amount of fine-tuning if the masses of at least some of the superpartners are at the TeV energy scale. The conservation of a new multiplicative quantum number, the R-parity, can be assumed to prevent phenomena in contrast with experimental evidences, as the proton decay. Superpartners have R-parity -1, and Standard Model particles R-parity +1. If the conservation of R-parity is assumed, in collider experiments supersymmetric particles can only be produced in even numbers (usually two), and the lightest supersymmetric particles (LSP, usually taken to be the neutralino), is stable.The LHC (Large Hadron Collider), is a hadron collider able to accelerate protons to unprecedented energies. Between 2010 and 2012 it operated at a centre-of-mass energy of the proton-proton collisions of 7 and 8 TeV.Its general-purpose experiments, ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC Apparatus) and CMS (Compact Muon Spectrometer) collected data corresponding to about 5 $fb^{-1}$ at $\sqrt{s}$ = 7 TeV and 20 $fb^{-1}$ at $\sqrt{s}$ = 8 TeV. The LHC and its experiments have been built with the main motivations of searching for the Higgs boson, discovered by the ATLAS and CMS experiments in 2012, and searching for signals of Supersymmetry.There are strong theoretical reasons to expect the supersymmetric particles to lie at the TeV energy scale, which would make them accessible at the LHC.In the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, the lightest superpartner of the top quark, light stop is very likely to be lighter than the superpartners of the other quarks. This thesis focuses on the search for direct stop pair production with the data collected by the ATLAS experiment. Two analyses have been performed, addressing different final states and decay modes.The first analysis targets stop masses close to the mass of the top quark, ideal to solve the hierarchy problem.The mass spectrum assumed is such that m(stop)