Impact of jet veto resummation on slepton searches

Abstract

Abstract

Several searches for new physics at the LHC require a fixed number of signal jets, vetoing events with additional jets from QCD radiation. As the probed scale of new physics gets much larger than the jet-veto scale, such jet vetoes strongly impact the QCD perturbative series, causing nontrivial theoretical uncertainties. We consider slepton pair production with 0 signal jets, for which we perform the resummation of jet-veto logarithms and study its impact. Currently, the experimental exclusion limits take the jet-veto cut into account by extrapolating to the inclusive cross section using parton shower Monte Carlos. Our results indicate that the associated theoretical uncertainties can be large, and when taken into account have a sizeable impact already on present exclusion limits. This is improved by performing the resummation to higher order, which allows us to obtain accurate predictions even for high slepton masses. For the interpretation of the experimental results to benefit from improved theory predictions, it would be useful for the experimental analyses to also provide limits on the unfolded visible 0-jet cross section.