SModelS v1.2: long-lived particles, combination of signal regions, and other novelties

SModelS is an automatised tool enabling the fast interpretation of simplified model results from the LHC within any model of new physics respecting a $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry. With the version 1.2 we announce several new features. First, previous versions were restricted to missing energy signatures and assumed prompt decays within each decay chain. SModelS v1.2 considers the lifetime of each $\mathbb{Z}_2$-odd particle and appropriately takes into account missing energy, heavy stable charge particle and R-hadron signatures. Second, the current version allows for a combination of signal regions in efficiency map results whenever a covariance matrix is available from the experiment. This is an important step towards fully exploiting the constraining power of efficiency map results. Several other improvements increase the user-friendliness, such as the use of wildcards in the selection of experimental results, and a faster database which can be given as a URL. Finally, smodelsTools provides an interactive plots maker to conveniently visualize the results of a model scan.