http://cms.cern.ch/cds/SUS-15-007

NICOLA

The paper is very well written, and explains all details of a complex and sophisticated search in a clear and comprehensive way. The analysis appears to have been conducted with great care; we congratulate with the authors for this excellent piece of work.

Some comments:

-L 107, the sentence would read better removing the comma after “generated” Figure 2 and L 161: it would be useful to quantify what is meant with “small” and “significant” ISR contributions. In particular, in Fig 2 it would be useful to clarify if the definitions for the left and right plots are complementary (i.e., x⇐A on the left and x>A on the right, rather than, e.g., x<A and x>B, with B>A, which would mean that there is a third category not shown). Also in Figure 2, “(red curves, shown for 1500 GeV gluino and 100 GeV neutralino.)” would be more clear as “red curve …” since there is just one per plot, even if the plots are two. Also, the period should be outside the closing parenthesis.

- L178: although formally correct, the sentence sounds a bit weird: it states that triggers are chosen in order to be looser than the analysis cuts, while in real life the triggers are defined in advance, based on rate constraints and analysis cuts are then defined to be tighter than the trigger ones. We would suggest either rephrasing to reflect this, or to simply replace “the lepton isolation requirements used in these triggers were very loose” with “these triggers were designed using very loose lepton isolation requirements, …”, to imply that the triggers were designed in advance of data taking with the needs for this analysis in mind.

-Table 1: The reader may wonder why no number is reported for backgrounds in the second row.

GIAN LUCA

Line 10. The R parity should be or very brieflly itroduced or add a reference. Line 141-142. Is not clear if the Delta R variable is defined as the cone divided by pt or not. If so the definition in the text is misleading.

Line 141-142. Theare is an extra full stop in mini-iso ( superscript of Delta R variable)

Table 1: Why there are no SM bkg prediction before the cut and after the single lepton requirement ?

Line 196 - 200 This is part is confusing and not immediately clear, also looking at the numbers. e.g the 40 % sholud be around 36 % looking at the numbers that is not almost 40% in opinion. Of this, our signal regions keep more than half of the events in non-compressed models.. → Moving from this selection to the base selection we keep more than half of the events in non-compressed models…

Is there any reference for the ABC method?

Line 329: the sencence from “but otherwise…” is unclear for me. Coluld be rephrase maybe. Line 362: is necessary ~ in a range?

LINDA

- L7: this sentence is not clear. Maybe better: “Since Gauge quantum numbers are preserved by this mapping, to preserve degrees of freedom a SM spin-1/2 Dirac particle, such as the top quark, has two spin-0 partners, the top squarks.”? - L22: that ameliorate this effect –> to/and ameliorate this effect? - L66: for examples Refs [ ] (without comma) - L89: tt+jets (without space) - L98: use –> employ? - L100: “cross-section”–> “cross section” - L141: Deltaeta-Deltaphi? - L169: “single leptonically decaying W boson” (without comma) - L170: “transverse mass, mT, defined as” - L175-182: I would use the present tense - L180-181: “is found to be about 95%, independent of the” –> “is found to be about 95% and is independent of the” - Figure3: compresssed –> compressed - L231: full stop at the end of the line - L239: It is not so clear why the ABCD method should work in this case - L286: comma before “while” - L355-356: The number of… IS (and not “are”) - L372: hyptheses –> hypotheses - L387: correspond –> corresponds

RICCARDO

- abstract (at the very end): top-quark mass –> top-quark mass value.

- Fig. 11: in printed Black&White the two limits cannot be distinguished

- L401-406: We find this explanation not very clear. We propose a slight modification to look like:

“Although dilepton events are nominally excluded in the analysis, in this kinematic region the sensitivity to the signal is dominated by the events that have at least two leptonic W-boson decays, which produce additional EmissT as well as a tail in the mT distribution. A significant number of these signal events escape the dilepton veto. These events include W decays to tau-leptons that decay hadronically, as well as decays to electrons or muons that are below kinematic thresholds or are outside of the detector acceptance.”