{"id":"2daca5c3-ad9f-49a3-a8df-3c045b56f57d","arxiv_id":"2507.16400","paper_version":1,"verdict":"UNVERDICTED","confidence":"MODERATE","novelty_score":0.0,"correctness_risk":"low","formal_verification":"none","parameter_count":0,"one_line_summary":"A review of LHC supersymmetry searches through 2018 concludes that no clear signal has been found, with only mild excesses in several channels.","lead":"This paper summarizes the latest ATLAS and CMS searches for supersymmetric particles at the Large Hadron Collider, reporting no discovery so far. It is a useful status snapshot for anyone tracking whether the most popular extension of the standard model has shown up in data.","discovery_kind":"review","skeptic_critique":{"model":"deepseek-v4-flash","headline":"No significant objection identified — the summary's 'no clear sign of new physics' is appropriately hedged and faithfully reflects the cited analyses.","rationale":"The reader identified the untested assumption that the background estimates in the primary analyses are correct. That is a real limitation, but it is inherited from the experimental publications and is not a defect of this summary paper, which disclaims any new analysis. The paper's strongest claim is deliberately modest: it reports that several excesses exist but none individually constitutes a clear discovery. This is consistent with the published LHC results and with the broader field consensus. My stress-test focused on whether the paper overstates or misrepresents the significance of the excesses it cites. It does not: the quoted significances are matched to specific papers, and the summary explicitly says 'no clear sign,' not 'no deviations.' The internal typo in Section 1 about gauginos/higgsinos is a copyediting issue, not a logical flaw. Since the paper is a review with no new statistical claims, there is no load-bearing concern that would change the UNVERDICTED verdict; the paper is neither accepted nor rejected as a research contribution, and the reader's assessment stands.","tokens_in":5488,"tokens_out":2449,"duration_ms":26880,"concrete_test":"For each cited excess, retrieve the primary ATLAS/CMS paper (refs. 11, 12, 15, 32) and verify that (a) the quoted significance matches the published value, and (b) the original paper concludes the excess is consistent with background after considering the look-elsewhere effect; if all match, the summary's 'no clear sign' claim is supported.","verdict_should_be":"UNCHANGED","load_bearing_attack":"This is a conference proceedings summary, not an original analysis. The central claim (Section 6: 'Several excesses were observed, but there is still no clear sign of new physics') is a qualitatively correct synthesis of the cited ATLAS/CMS results; each quoted excess (2σ, 3σ, 2.4σ) is attributed to a specific search and is reported with its original significance, and the paper explicitly avoids claiming they are incompatible with the standard model. No circular step or unsupported derivation is present because no new statistical combination is performed. The only substantive concern one might raise is that the multiple excesses are not combined or corrected for look-elsewhere effects, but the paper makes no claim requiring such a combination; it merely reports the state of the field. There is a minor factual typo in Section 1 ('higgs boson partners called gauginos' should be 'higgsinos'), but it does not affect the central claim. Thus no load-bearing concern lands.","agreement_with_reader":"partial"},"referee_report":{"model":"deepseek-v4-flash","summary":"This conference proceedings paper, authored by Jory Sonneveld on behalf of ATLAS and CMS, summarizes the status of supersymmetry searches after LHC Run 2. It reviews strong and electroweak sparticle production, long-lived particle signatures, and novel search techniques, and it closes with future prospects for Run 3 and the HL-LHC. The central scientific claim, stated in Section 6, is that several excesses (2σ, 3σ, and 2.4σ) were observed in specific ATLAS and CMS searches but there is still no clear sign of new physics. The paper does not perform any new statistical combination or derivation; it reports and contextualizes published results.","tokens_in":5636,"tokens_out":2067,"duration_ms":23035,"significance":"As a review article, the paper is a useful and compact survey of the ATLAS/CMS SUSY search program, accurately attributing each quoted excess to a specific search with its original significance and explicitly avoiding the claim that these excesses are incompatible with the Standard Model. Its main value lies in the synthesis of disparate search strategies and in the clear statement that, despite several local deviations, no global evidence for supersymmetry has emerged. The conclusion is appropriately hedged and consistent with the cited primary literature. The paper does not introduce new physics results, so its significance is primarily pedagogical and archival rather than transformative.","major_comments":[],"minor_comments":[{"comment":"The sentence 'The supersymmetric electroweak gauge boson partners called gauginos and higgs boson partners called gauginos mix to states called neutralinos and charginos' contains a factual typo: the higgs boson partners should be called higgsinos, not gauginos.","section":"Section 1"},{"comment":"The abstract states that the talk covers 'several observations of deviations from the standard model' without immediately qualifying that these deviations are not statistically significant. Section 6 provides the needed qualification, but the abstract would be less misleading if it echoed that wording.","section":"Abstract"},{"comment":"The text says 'run 3 will start' and describes the high-luminosity LHC as 'now planned in 2026.' This phrasing is inconsistent with the July 2025 arXiv posting date, since Run 3 has already begun. The manuscript appears to be a write-up of a 2018-era talk; either the text should be updated or the paper should be clearly dated as a historical proceedings.","section":"Section 5"},{"comment":"Reference 32, 'Phys. Let. B.10 055 (2018)arXiv:1808.04095,' contains a malformed journal name and volume; it should be corrected to the proper Physics Letters B citation.","section":"References"},{"comment":"In the discussion of the ATLAS pixel dE/dx search, the sentence 'only events with particles with 0.3 < βγ <0.9 were used' could be clarified to indicate that this is the selection on the particle's βγ, and that the paper does not define βγ in the text (though it is standard notation).","section":"Section 4"}],"recommendation":"minor_revision","confidential_remarks":"The paper is a competent conference proceedings summary that faithfully reflects the cited ATLAS/CMS results. The main concern is editorial: it appears to be an unrevised 2018-era write-up posted in 2025, which creates temporal inconsistencies (e.g., Run 3 described as upcoming). This does not affect the scientific content, but the journal may wish to ask the author to either update the text or explicitly date it as a historical summary."},"author_rebuttal":null,"desk_editor":{"model":"deepseek-v4-flash","letter":"Hi [name],\n\nQuick take: this is a conference proceedings summary from ATLAS/CMS, not a research paper. If you go in expecting a new measurement or interpretation, you'll be disappointed; there is none. But as a status report it's accurate and useful. The central line in Section 6 — several excesses, no clear sign of new physics — is a fair synthesis of the cited results. Each excess (2σ, 3σ, 2.4σ) is attributed to a specific search, and the paper doesn't overclaim them.\n\nWhat it does well: it covers a wide spread of search strategies — strong production, electroweak production, long-lived particles, emerging jets, RPV — and it gives concrete references for each. The descriptions of the techniques (recursive jigsaw, data scouting, pixel dE/dx) are concise and correctly placed. For someone wanting a quick map of where the LHC SUSY program stands at the end of Run 2, this is a decent starting point.\n\nSoft spots. There's a factual typo in Section 1: 'higgs boson partners called gauginos' — should be 'higgsinos'. Minor, but it appears in a paper that people may copy. The abstract says 'several observations of deviations from the standard model' without immediately noting all are sub-2.5σ; the body does qualify them, so it's a presentation issue, not a substantive one. The multiple excesses are not combined or corrected for look-elsewhere effects, but the paper never claims they are anything more than individual local excesses; for a summary that's acceptable. Also, the 'future prospects' sections are brief and somewhat generic, but that's typical for a talk.\n\nIs there anything load-bearing wrong? No. The math and citation pattern check out; every claim traces to a published or public ATLAS/CMS result. The paper is careful not to derive new limits or reinterpret results beyond what the collaborations did.\n\nWho is this for? Grad students or colleagues who want a 20-minute orientation to the Run 2 SUSY search landscape, or a citation anchor for a proceedings. It doesn't deserve a full referee cycle as a research article — there's nothing to referee beyond the summary's accuracy, which appears fine. I would not cite it in my own work; I'd cite the underlying searches. For a reading group, it's a fine warm-up but not a discussion centerpiece.\n\nRecommendation: desk-appropriate for a proceedings; don't waste referee time. If it were submitted to a journal as a review, a light editorial check would handle it.","headline":"A faithful, clearly written conference summary of LHC SUSY searches; no new result, but an honest and accurate status snapshot with a couple of minor presentation slips.","tokens_in":6114,"tokens_out":2243,"would_cite":false,"duration_ms":22981,"reading_group":"no","serious_thinker":"yes","would_accept_peer_review":false},"rs_alignment":null,"lean_confirmation":null,"pith_extraction":{"msc":[],"pacs":[],"model":"deepseek-v4-flash","headline":"After the full LHC Run 2 dataset, the ATLAS and CMS supersymmetry search programs have observed several 2–3 sigma excesses but no statistically significant evidence of new physics, with the deviations best interpreted as background…","keywords":["supersymmetry","LHC Run 2","ATLAS","CMS","missing transverse energy","long-lived particles","electroweakino","R-parity violation"],"falsifier":"If, in the same search regions that produced the 2 sigma, 3 sigma, and 2.4 sigma excesses, the LHC Run 3 data showed the excesses growing as a real signal would, the paper's 'no clear sign of new physics' conclusion would be refuted; specifically, a 5 sigma deviation in the recursive jigsaw three-lepton search region would settle it.","tokens_in":5303,"feed_emoji":"⚛️","tokens_out":9623,"duration_ms":89051,"temperature":0.7,"pith_summary":"This review of the LHC Run 2 supersymmetry search program by the two large multipurpose experiments aims to establish where the field stands after the complete Run 2 dataset. Despite many new search strategies and several observed excesses of two to three standard deviations, the paper concludes that there is still no clear sign of new physics. The authors survey strong sparticle production, electroweak sparticle production, and long-lived particle searches, and interpret the deviations as likely background fluctuations. This matters because it defines the status of supersymmetry as a candidate theory beyond the standard model and sets the stage for the higher-statistics runs to come.","feed_headline":"No clear SUSY signal despite LHC excesses","feed_subtitle":"A Run 2 review says 2–3 sigma deviations are likely background, with Run 3 data to decide.","key_machinery":"The central mechanism is the comparison of observed event counts with standard model background predictions in the LHC collision data, quantified by statistical significance. The searches are organised by final-state signatures: multijets plus missing transverse momentum for strong production, multileptons for electroweak production, and displaced tracks, disappearing tracks, or heavy stable charged particles for long-lived sparticles. The techniques that carry the individual analyses include Dalitz plots, data scouting, recursive jigsaw reconstruction, charm tagging, and pixel dE/dx ionization measurements.","core_discovery":"The paper's central claim is that after the full LHC Run 2, the ATLAS and CMS direct searches for supersymmetry show no statistically significant evidence for new physics. The supporting picture is a catalogue of null results and modest excesses: a $2\\sigma$ excess in the tau-lepton strong production search, a small excess in sbottom pair production, a $3\\sigma$ excess in the recursive jigsaw electroweakino search, and a $2.4\\sigma$ excess in the stable charged particle search. None of these reaches the $5\\sigma$ threshold, so the paper's summary reads that 'several excesses were observed, but there is still no clear sign of new physics.' The authors treat the excesses as consistent with standard model background fluctuations.","pith_inferences":["If the excesses are truly fluctuations, the lack of light sparticles puts pressure on natural explanations of the Higgs mass, pointing toward fine-tuning or alternative symmetry-breaking mechanisms; this is an interpretation the paper does not itself develop.","A joint statistical analysis of all the excesses across different search channels, treating them as a family, could reveal whether they are correlated (as some new-physics models with multiple final states would predict) or independent fluctuations; no such combination is presented in the paper.","A direct way to test the paper's conclusion would be to repeat the same search-region selections on the first Run 3 data: if the 3 sigma jigsaw excess persists at a similar magnitude with several times more data, the background-fluctuation interpretation would become increasingly unlikely.","The paper's emphasis on long-lived particle signatures and R-parity violating models suggests that future supersymmetry searches may need to rely less on missing transverse energy and more on trigger-level tracking and data scouting, an implication the authors only hint at in the outlook."],"forward_implications":["If the absence of a clear signal is correct, then strongly produced squarks and gluinos must be heavier than roughly a few TeV, or they decay through R-parity violating or long-lived channels that evade the classic missing-energy searches.","The observed 2–3 sigma excesses become targets for the next data-taking period: with more statistics they should either fade toward the background expectation or grow into a genuine signal.","The novel techniques showcased in these searches—recursive jigsaw reconstruction, data scouting, emerging jets, and dE/dx-based particle identification—will be standard tools for Run 3 and the high-luminosity LHC.","The projected Run 3 dataset of about 300 inverse femtobarns and the high-luminosity LHC's 3000 inverse femtobarns are expected to extend the mass reach for heavy sparticles and improve sensitivity to low-cross-section electroweak production."],"supporting_citations":[{"why":"Reports the 2 sigma excess in tau-lepton final states that the paper counts among the deviations.","marker":"11"},{"why":"Reports the small excess in sbottom pair production in the compressed region.","marker":"12"},{"why":"Reports the 3 sigma excess in the recursive jigsaw electroweakino search, the most significant deviation.","marker":"15"},{"why":"Reports the 2.4 sigma excess in the stable charged particle search.","marker":"32"},{"why":"Finds no excess in the compressed electroweakino search with soft leptons, supporting the background-only conclusion.","marker":"16"},{"why":"Finds no excess in the CMS compressed electroweakino search, corroborating the ATLAS null result.","marker":"17"},{"why":"CMS inclusive jets-plus-missing-energy search, reinterpreted for long-lived split-supersymmetry; sets limits that define the null-result landscape.","marker":"20"}],"fun_headline_variants":["SUSY searches yield no 5-sigma, only hints","LHC still silent on SUSY despite tantalizing excesses","No new physics claim: Run 2 SUSY excesses just background","SUSY null results dominate despite 3-sigma blips","Run 2 SUSY searches end with no 5-sigma hits"],"cache_read_input_tokens":3200,"weakest_assumption_plain":"The conclusion that the observed excesses are not signs of new physics rests on the untested assumption that the background estimates and systematic uncertainties in the cited ATLAS and CMS analyses are correct, so that the quoted significances of 2, 3, and 2.4 sigma really are statistical fluctuations.","fun_headline_variants_meta":{"raw":{"variants":["SUSY searches yield no 5-sigma, only hints","LHC still silent on SUSY despite tantalizing excesses","No new physics claim: Run 2 SUSY excesses just background","SUSY null results dominate despite 3-sigma blips","Run 2 SUSY searches end with no 5-sigma hits"]},"model":"deepseek-v4-flash","effort":"low","cost_usd":0.000642,"raw_usage":{"total_tokens":2895,"prompt_tokens":826,"completion_tokens":2069,"prompt_tokens_details":{"cached_tokens":384},"prompt_cache_hit_tokens":384,"prompt_cache_miss_tokens":442,"completion_tokens_details":{"reasoning_tokens":1977}},"tokens_in":442,"tokens_out":2069,"duration_ms":16536,"temperature":1.0,"reasoning_tokens":1977,"cache_read_input_tokens":384,"cache_creation_input_tokens":0},"cache_creation_input_tokens":0},"created_at":"2026-08-06T15:09:17.074650+00:00","model_set":{"reader":"deepseek-v4-flash"},"falsifier":"If, in the same search regions that produced the 2 sigma, 3 sigma, and 2.4 sigma excesses, the LHC Run 3 data showed the excesses growing as a real signal would, the paper's 'no clear sign of new physics' conclusion would be refuted; specifically, a 5 sigma deviation in the recursive jigsaw three-lepton search region would settle it.","supporting_citations":[{"cited_title":"Search for squarks and gluinos in final states with hadronically decaying $\\tau$-leptons, jets, and missing transverse momentum using $pp$ collisions at $\\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector","cited_arxiv_id":"1808.06358","evidence_quote":"Reports the 2 sigma excess in tau-lepton final states that the paper counts among the deviations."},{"cited_title":null,"cited_arxiv_id":null,"evidence_quote":"Reports the small excess in sbottom pair production in the compressed region."},{"cited_title":"Aaboud et al","cited_arxiv_id":null,"evidence_quote":"Reports the 3 sigma excess in the recursive jigsaw electroweakino search, the most significant deviation."},{"cited_title":"Search for heavy charged long-lived particles in proton-proton collisions at $\\sqrt{s} = 13$ TeV using an ionisation measurement with the ATLAS detector","cited_arxiv_id":"1808.04095","evidence_quote":"Reports the 2.4 sigma excess in the stable charged particle search."},{"cited_title":"Aaboud et al","cited_arxiv_id":null,"evidence_quote":"Finds no excess in the compressed electroweakino search with soft leptons, supporting the background-only conclusion."},{"cited_title":null,"cited_arxiv_id":null,"evidence_quote":"Finds no excess in the CMS compressed electroweakino search, corroborating the ATLAS null result."},{"cited_title":null,"cited_arxiv_id":null,"evidence_quote":"CMS inclusive jets-plus-missing-energy search, reinterpreted for long-lived split-supersymmetry; sets limits that define the null-result landscape."}],"review_version":1}