We pursue a scenario where the lighter top squark (stop) mass is accessible
for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in the near future, while gluinos and first
two generation squarks are heavier. At s=8 TeV, we investigate the
identification of stops which decay predominantly into a top quark and the
stable lightest supersymmetric particle. We use a simple kinematical variable,
M3, to reconstruct two top quarks which are pair-produced from the stops, in
the fully hadronic channel. The dominant Standard Model (SM) background for
this signal stems from ttˉ plus jets, with one top quark decaying into blν, where the lepton is undetected and the ν produces missing
transverse momentum. The lepton identification efficiency is thus crucial in
order to estimate the background correctly. We identify kinematical variables
to reduce the SM background. We find that it is possible to achieve signal and
background cross-section at similar levels for stop masses around 350−500
GeV for a neutralino mass of 100 GeV.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure