Implementation of the ATLAS-SUSY-2018-31 analysis in the MadAnalysis 5 framework (sbottoms with multi-bottoms and missing transverse energy; 139 fb−1)

We present the implementation, in the MadAnalysis 5 framework, of the ATLAS-SUSY-2018-31 search for new physics, and document the validation of this implementation. This analysis targets, with 139 fb−1 of proton–proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV recorded by the ATLAS detector between 2015 and 2018, the production of a pair of supersymmetric bottom squarks when they further decay through a cascade decay involving the second lightest neutralino and a Standard Model Higgs boson. The validation of our work is based on three benchmark scenarios targeting different kinematic configurations. The first of them considers a new physics spectrum leading to the presence of high-pT b-jets originating from sbottom decays, whereas the last two, that differ by the neutralino mass spectrum, are dedicated to the compressed regime and thus yield the presence of soft b-jets in the final state. We obtain an agreement between the MadAnalysis 5 predictions and the official ATLAS results at the level of 20–30%, the largest discrepancies being related to cases exhibiting a poor Monte Carlo numerical precision at the level of the official ATLAS results.