Search for direct top squark pair production in final states with two leptons in TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

The results of a search for direct pair production of top squarks in events with two opposite-charge leptons (electrons or muons) are reported, using of integrated luminosity from proton–proton collisions at TeV collected by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. To cover a range of mass differences between the top squark and lighter supersymmetric particles, four possible decay modes of the top squark are targeted with dedicated selections: the decay into a b -quark and the lightest chargino with , the decay into an on-shell top quark and the lightest neutralino, the three-body decay and the four-body decay . No significant excess of events is observed above the Standard Model background for any selection, and limits on top squarks are set as a function of the and masses. The results exclude at 95% confidence level masses up to about 720 GeV, extending the exclusion region of supersymmetric parameter space covered by previous searches.