Searching for SUSY in the Z-peak

Dr Emma Kuwertz
(U Victoria)

Despite the absence of conclusive experimental evidence, Supersymmetry (SUSY) remains one of the favoured theories for Beyond Standard Model physics. Some SUSY models offer potential dark matter candidates, and if supersymmetric particles (sparticles) have masses close to the TeV scale, SUSY may present a solution to the hierarchy problem. In such a scenario, these sparticles should be produced at a high enough rate to be accessible to the LHC experiments. In some cases, Z bosons may be produced from the cascade decays of sparticles. The ATLAS experiment previously reported a modest excess of 3.0 sigma when searching for such signatures at 8 TeV, though CMS reported results consistent with the Standard Model in a similar kinematic region. This talk reviews some of the motivation for SUSY, introduces how experiments like ATLAS are searching for it, and presents the very recent results of a search for new phenomena in events containing leptonically decaying Z boson with the ATLAS detector.