Searching for Stops at the Large Hadron Collider
Michael Graesser
T-2 LANL
With the discovery of a Higgs-like particle, understanding the mechanism of electroweak breaking seems now finally closer. The top quark is the most massive fundamental particle and has significant contributions to the Higgs boson mass, and is important to many searches for new physics at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). A number of extensions to the Standard Model predict new particles - "partners" to the top quark - involved in canceling the unnaturally large top quark contribution to the Higgs boson mass. In this talk I will discuss how the sensitivity of searches for these particles at the LHC can be improved, and in particular how such particles can be distinguished from top quarks.