SUS-15-009: Search for natural supersymmetry in events with top quark pairs and photons in pp collisions at √s = 8 TeV

CWR

Comments Set 1

request to change the ref. 40 electron reference to

@article{Khachatryan:2015hwa, author = "Khachatryan, Vardan and others", title = "{)=8 TeV", collaboration = "CMS", journal = "JINST", volume = "10", pages = "P06005", doi = "10.1088/1748-0221/10/06/P06005", year = "2015", eprint = "1502.02701", archivePrefix = "arXiv", primaryClass = "physics.ins-det", reportNumber = "CMS-EGM-13-001, CERN-PH-EP-2015-004", SLACcitation = "%%CITATION = ARXIV:1502.02701;%%", }

Response: Done

Comments Set 2

General question: - what similar previous studies do we have and how do these compare with the present study? By how much do we improve in excluding the available phase space?

Response: Both CMS and ATLAS have published searches using photons for Gauge Mediation scenarios, however these have been interpreted with light first- and second-generation squarks and their impressive (>1.5 TeV) upper limits on squark masses are not comparable. For CMS see CMS-SUS-14-004 using Razor variables in 2012 and SUS-15-012 using MET in 2015 data. ATLAS has published results for single-photon searches requiring b-jets which would be closer in sensitivity — see ATLAS photon+b+MET in 7 TeV data and ATLAS photon + X in 8 TeV data — however the source of b-jets in their results is from Higgs or Z boson decays; they considered higgsino and neutral wino neutralino mixings, but still maintained squark production as first- and second-generation only. It would be possible for CMS and ATLAS to interpret these results in a light third-generation squark scenario, however without requiring b-jets (for CMS) or a second photon with their b-jet category (for ATLAS), the sensitivity to stop mass should be quite reduced. We recommend to analyzers already considering di-photon + jets + MET to consider an additional b-tagged category for an interesting extension.,,Outside of GMSB models, CMS and ATLAS have searched many times for direct stop pair production. Our stop mass reach is quite similar to those of the CMS public summary for T2tt in 2015 but falls short of CMS’ results in 2016. Our results exclude higher neutralino masses than these searches are able to, however they are very different models when comparing LSP to NLSP neutralinos. Lastly, outside of even SUSY searches, the cross-section for ttbar+gamma and especially ttbar+gamma+gamma would be sensitive to our signal. CMS at 8 TeV and ATLAS at 7 TeV show good agreement of the ttbar+gamma production rate with the NLO expectation. These have not been interpreted against our model’s additional production of ttbar+gamma. While somewhat similar results exist, we are not aware of any other searches for light third-generation squark production in a GMSB scenario, or of searches for di-photon + b-jet + lepton events.

- why do we use in this paper pt_Miss instead of ET_miss as a name of the variable? It is quite unlike what we do in the vast majority of our other papers

Response: Suggestion by the English Editor ==> Also note that CMS now recommends use of p_T^miss

Details

- line 3 “sparticlesa” typo

Response: Corrected

- Ref 17: is this the best reference we have for this: a conference contribution from 16 years ago? I guess it was not a very successful idea then…

This appears to be the foundational statement of the little hierarchy problem itself; there are many papers discussing it but in the context of a proposed solution.

- line 8: …largely unexplored? Are all stop searches that we do in CMS not covering this parameters space already in the search for natural SUSY? Then this sentence seems largely exaggerated! (and wrong). Unless you mean something entirely different here that I did not catch, like a specific has space region.

See the above answer for what similar studies exist; that was the motivation behind this statement. However, we agree that it is too strong outside of the limited context of natural GMSB models so we have reworded.

- line 18: “… with each one” each pair? Or what do you mean?

Response: Hopefully made clearer. text now reads,Furthermore, if only the top squark is sufficiently light to be produced at the LHC, SUSY production would proceed through pairs of top squarks.. Assuming a bino-like neutralino NLSP, each t squark would decay to a top quark and a neutralino, with the neutralino decaying to a photon and gravitino resulting in a \ttbar+\Pgg\Pgg+\ptmiss event topology

- line 61: anti_kt: bravo, this is the correct notation. Don’t let anybody change it

Response: OK

- line 92: “isolation PT” This symbol is not defined before and we can just write normal p_T as all for all else. I guess we do not need it later any further either

Response: We now use p_T rather than PT

- line 118-119: confusing: are single top events done with Madgraph or POWHEG? I would expect the latter. Please check the text.

Single top events are generated with POWHEG as lines 119-120 state.

- figures 1 is too small for submission to the arXiv (it is ok for the journal as they will reset it themselves)

Response: Done

- line 187 what was done for the PDF uncertainty determination in this study? The systematic error looks rather large.

Response: The range shown is simply the minimum to the maximum fluctuation of all PDF uncertainties across all signal regions -- what was done is described in depth in the AN (AN2014_272_v4), see especially Table 21. Three independent nuisance parameters were introduced, one each for gluon-gluon, gluon-quark, and quark-antiquark initiated backgrounds. For all backgrounds of each type, the PDF uncertainty was taken from this twiki and fluctuated as prescribed, yielding a fluctuation in the total background yield. So among PDF_gg, PDF_gq, and PDF_qq across four signal regions, these range between 2.5 and 10%. Most of these are in the 3-5% range, however for example ttbar+W is 13% and comprises a more significant portion of the background estimate in SR2 than in SR1, giving the largest fluctuation of 10%.

- line 209 I guess this is just reflecting the ~ 1 sigma excess we observe in table 3, right?

Response: Correct

- line 217: what exactly does it mean? With the same kind of analysis, i.e. looking for the same signature? Or GMSB searches in general? Please be more specific. By how much are the results improved in this analysis ?

Response: See the response above for what similar studies exist;

Comments Set 3

Type A: English/Style/Formatting (including figures)

Everywhere: * t squark -> top squark. * inconsistent notation for pT (70, 89, 92, 93, caption fig2) * particle notation (Z, e) should not be in italics (note the indices of SF)

Response: t quark-> top quark done Response: Inconsistent notation for pT: made consistent. Response: Z, e italics corrected

Abstract: Gauge mediated broken SUSY (one does not search SUSY breaking) “that leads to lower limits on the mass of top squarks of up to 750 GeV.”: - it is difficult to follow a lower limit that is up to alternative: “that leads to exclusion of the top squark masses below 650 - 750 GeV”

Response: changed

l2: corresponds to a desirable -> is considered to be an attractive

Response: Changed

l4 “are so-called” > “are the“ l4 “sparticlesa” > “sparticles” l12 "the missing transverse" -> missing transverse" l13 "where photons in the final state..." -> that decays through neutralino->gamma,gravitino leading to photons in the final state" l15: strongly-interacting -> strongly interacting l16 SUSY -> SUSY particles l17-20 -> of top squarks. Assuming a bino-like ... gravitino leading to a ttbar+gammagamma+ptmiss topology. l21 focus -> concentrate l21 where one of the resulting... remove rest of this sentence. l22: Based on ..., the analysis requires... -> the first part of the sentence has no connection to the second one... make two sentences. l23 remove "being"

Response: Suggested changes implemented

l125 how can one observe a rate in a peak? -> choose better formulation

Response: We use the size of the Z boson peak in the invariant mass distribution of electron-photon pairs in the electron+jets channel to determine the misidentification rate.

l29 shower distribution -> shower shape (or requirements on the shower shape) l31 one- and two-photon l32 dependence l32 ttbar + gammagamma l35 SUSY -> SUSY model/framework. l47 of ECAL -> of the ECAL l51 constructed l60 “PF particles” > “PF particle candidates”: we deal only with candidates l61 Jet definitions use... l68 “< 5 %” I would rather write “less than 5 %” - it gives more fluency l70 to have a photon-like distribution -> to be photon-like distributed l70 scalar sum of pT -> scalar sum of pT of all pF candidates l78 “< 10 %” I would rather write “less than 10 %” - it gives more fluency l80 and to avoid overlap of the electron and muon channels.

Response: Suggested changes addressed

l81 "the medium working point" is slang. Leave this sentence out. l82 in that case write out CSV here l85 the working point used for this algorithm, CSV medium (CSVM) is... l85 “efficiency of tagging light or gluon jets” ➢ the efficiency of mistagging light or gluon jets as b-jets

Response: Agreed it is slang and should be removed. Propose to reword as: Paragraph reworded.

l84,86 is about instead of \simeq

Response: changed to "about"

ANALYSIS l.88: muon -> single-muon l92 a looser criteria -> looser criteria l92 isolation PT values -> isolation values l94 and at least ... b quark. -> at least one jet must be tagged as a b-jet. l.95: by at least a dR=0.5 -> by at least dR=0.5 l111: ttbar +jets -> ttbar+jets

Response: Suggested changes addressed

l111 This is no longer 'Analysis strategy': Background estimation would suit this part better l113 lowest-order -> tree level (or otherwise leading order) l117 “are rejected” > “are removed in order to avoid double counting“ l118 W or Z+jets -> W+jets or Z+jets (same for W+gamma) l119 with next-to-leading order (NLO) -> with the next-lo-leading order (NLO) generator l120 Z2: did you not use Z2* (with another reference)? l123,124 I expect that W+gamma does not contribute significantly to misidentified electrons as photons as it only has one electron(or else only through a double fake) l128,129 The first... -> First, a scale factor (SF) for the Z+jets... events is measured.

Response: Comments dealt with

l129 Zgamma+jets: does it mean Z+gamma+jets or Z(gamma)+jets or Drell-Yan + jets? Not so clear.

"Z+jets" refers to Drell-Yan with additional jets, and "Zgamma+jets" refers to the production of both a Z and a photon with additional jets.

l147 Figure 1c: remove the contour around the 1c l147 Figure 1: remove (a), (b), (c) from figures (or move to under the figures) for presentation purposes l147 Figure 1: egamma is subscript l147 Figure 1: wordiness: 'in extracting' l147 figure 1: there is a frame around the third plot l147 figure 1: caption: first sentence sounds strange: "in extracting" l147 figure 1: caption: e gamma wrongly written in subscript l151,152 I would rather write: "The sources of two-photon events in SR2 are photon radiation and jets misidentified as photons." l161 the ... backgrounds are allowed.. -> the normalizations of the ... backgrounds are allowed...

Response: Comments dealt with

l170 Figure 2: “showing (a) CR1 with one misidentified photon, and (b) CR2 with two misidentified photons are shown. ”: there is no a) nor b) on the figures, therefore -> “showing CR1 with one misidentified photon (left), and CR2 with two misidentified photons (right).” l170 Figure 2: y-axis: do you mean <Events/GeV> divided by bin width? Perhaps you could also explain this in the caption. l170 figure 2: caption: showing ... are shown l170 figure 2: caption: distribution -based -> distribution-based l170 figure 2: caption: additional uncertainty.The -> additional uncertainty. The

Response: comments addressed

l177 bin-by-bin ratio ... distributions-> specify that this is in simulation (?) l179 distributions l181 “for only SR2” > “for SR2 only” l191 muon ID, photon ID: define l192 Table 2: “The dominant rate uncertainty from the “ > “The dominant rate uncertainty originates from the ” l192 Table 2: despite -> despite the fact that l192 Table 2: check marks indicate that uncertainties affect the shapes of distributions l192 table 2: line break ttbar+gamma Not clear what is referred to here. l192 table 2: 2nd sentence ?? Not clear what is wanted l192 table 2: line break between ttbar+gamma; Not clear what is whated l192 “The dominant rate uncertainty from the “ > “The dominant rate uncertainty originates from the ”

Response: Comments other than indicated were dealt with dealt with

l194 signal region shown -> signal region as shown l194 Figure 3: perhaps clarify that there was division by bin width l194 Figure 3: is it possible to use the same binning for signal and background? l194 Figure 3: perhaps clarify the notation of GGM(460_175) and make notation conform table3 l194 Figure 3: “Comparison of data and MC simulation in pmiss_T for the combined (e and mu) signal regions: (a) SR1 with one reconstructed photon and (b) SR2 with two reconstructed photons. ”: there is no a) nor b) on the figures, therefore > “Comparison of pmiss_T distribution in data and MC simulation for the combined (e and mu) signal regions: SR1 with one reconstructed photon (left) and SR2 with two reconstructed photons (right).”

Response: comments addressed

l195 table 3: use m_{~t}

Response: English editor and Publication chair indicated how to refer to mass of top squark.

l195 Table 3: are there also counts per bin available?

Response: This was requested following the approval talk and they can be found here.

l195 Table 3: a box around this table -> then put a box around table 2 l195 Table 3: 460_175 -> 460, 175 table 3: the first errors -> the first quoted uncertainties

Response: comments addressed

l196,197 what simulation tools have been used for event generation?

%B:UE% The events are generated using Pythia 6, allowing the decay of SUSY particles to be handled by Pythia.

l198 m_{top squark} -> m_{\tilde{t}} l202 decoupled to -> decoupled by setting them to l202: are decoupled at very high masses -> are set to high masses in order to decouple (or so...) l205: limits sensitivity mass range -> limits the sensitivity of the mass range or limits the sensitive mass range l206 the 95% -> 95%

Response: Done

l210 Figure 4: it would be nice if the numbers in the figure(s) are also available online

Response: We could put the exact numbers within the figure in each bin with the "text" draw option, but this seems messy for a paper. The SUSY group as a whole might be able to release information like this, but only in huge chunks and very deliberately. Alternatively, we have submitted the data to HepData.

l210 figure 4: caption: upper limits on cross section -> upper limit of the cross section l209 figure 4: caption: m_{top squark} -> m_{~t}

Response: See earlier remark about name for top squark

l209 figure 4: consistent labeling of axes/labels in the plot and caption/text: m_{t squark} ->m_{~t} l210 Figure 5: there is a gap on the bottom of the band l210 Figure 5: Legend: write limit +- 1sigma (?)

Response:Addressed comments

l210 Figure 5: limits on cross section -> limits on the cross section

Response: Changed Figure 4 rather than 5

210 Figure 5: Observed and expected means: what are means?

Response: Reworded the caption: "Observed and expected exclusion contours at 95% CL in the top squark and bino mass plane."

l212 search for gauge-mediated broken SUSY l214 Upper limits on the cross section l214: cross section upper limits -> upper limits on the cross section l215: bino masses, and top -> bino masses. Top (2 sentences) l215 line break between number and unit l216: most stringest -> most stringent

Response: Addressed comments

l222,225,243,246,268,271,275,321,332,335,338,341: page ranges -> first page (convention) l223 13,452 -> 13, 452 l242,304,307,310,322 Collaboration collaboration (more often) l254,268,271,273 letter belonging to journal name l265/266 “2000. 2000.” > “2000,” l300 \sqrt{s} l305/306 “CERN, 2009, Geneva, Apr, 2009” > “2009” l309 “CERN, 2010, 2010” > “2010” l312 “CERN, Geneva, 2010” > “2010” l323 “CERN, 2009. Geneva, Jul, 2009” > “2009” l340 {MSSM} -> MSSM l332,334 missing spaces after dots l337 Comput.Phys.Commun. missing spaces and in contradiction with l340 l346 “eds. , CERN. CERN, Geneva, 2000. ” > “2000, ”

Response: References taken care of

Type B: Everything else (e.g. strategy, paper structure, emphasis, additions/subtractions, etc).

l8 is this not (to a certain extent) covered with other or direct stop searches as well? if not, then why?

This goes along with a previous comment; without the context being of results within natural GMSB models, this section is worded too strongly. Direct stop searches have been searched mightily but the GMSB phase space, with specifically bino-like neutralino mixings, is what is left largely unexplored.

l18: no - one stop decays to t gamma MET as explained in the following sentences.

Response: Not clear what is suggested here.

l35 references from 2009-2013: are there any new status/pheno papers (including dark matter, allowed masses) for this model?

Response: Taking a brief look at new papers on arxiv, there are a few. For example there's https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.08059 which is interesting but doesn't cover or care about GMSB photon searches. There's also https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.08442 which I haven't read fully yet but seems on the cusp of relevance while falling short. https://arxiv.org/abs/1303.0228 is very interesting and does mention stops and binos in the context of modified GMSB, however does not explictly motivate photons. https://arxiv.org/abs/1310.5758 has many suggestions for Run II searches, and several come tantalizingly close to relevant to our paper. But does not precisely name photons + b-jets. Overall these are interesting but considering the references [26-31] are just to explain what GMSB is to the reader (the paper references them right at the first mention of GMSB), We don't think we should add any of these.

l143: has this been checked?

Response: Yes

l44 definition of barrel? Up to what eta? Is only mentioned later in 65

Response: def of barrel has been added

l50 equation of ptmiss?

Response: equation of ptmiss is given at this point.

l78 definition of this transition region?

Response: definition of transition region is inserted.

l109 "expected" -> found? Or if expected, then why?

Response: This is a good point; while we do "expect" it, we also do "find" that this is the case. We change "expect" to "found".

l109 “to be much smaller” please quantify the amount, or if it is negligible mention “found to be negligible”

Response: added expected to be negligible

l110 ttbar + lepton + jets -> ttbar in lepton + jets (?)

Response: reworded to deal with comment.

l147 Table 1: 136 electron+jets channel (same as 127), not clear that this factor is used for muons, perhaps mention in text

Response: Slightly rewording this section will better clarify that this scale factor is applied for both electrons and muons, as Table 1 explains. Proposed changes: line 130: remove the "electron+jets" since it applies to both channels line 134: change "for the Z(\gamma)+jets MC, to "for the Z(\gamma)+jets MC in each channel,"

l147 table 1: you should explain where the systematic uncertainties come from

Response: We reword the final sentence of the caption for Table 1 to something like: "Uncertainties here are firstly from statistical uncertainties in the fit results, followed by the variations in resulting scale factor due to fluctuating systematic uncertainties and added in quadrature."

l170 figure 2: caption: what do you mean with "distribution-based"? -> explanation

Response: This be better stated with "shape-based" -- what is meant is that this systematic is taken as a shape uncertainty versus a MET-inclusive uncertainty. The English editor did not favor shape-based.

l173: What do you mean with percentage? -> explanation

Response: Reword as "the difference in CR1 between data and background is taken as a systematic uncertainty in the signal regions, applied bin-by-bin as a (1 - Data/Background) percent uncertainty.

l 174/175 what is CR2 used for? from the text is not used for the final results

Response: if was obtained to indicate what may be possible with higher statistics in the future

l175 "because of the statistical fluctuations" -> because of statistical fluctuations.

Response: done

l192 Table 2: jet energy resolution is missing?

Response: It is not missing; this should read "JES/JER". Line 189 should also read instead "jet energy scale and resolution (JES/JER)." Changes made

l192 Table 2: QCD scale and PDF could change the shape?

Response: Yes

l192 Table 2: Are PDF uncertainties included in the signal uncertainties?

Response: The signal systematics are calculated differently (see lines 196-197). we would not label them as parton distribution function uncertainties. All of the appropriate uncertainties are included in the "SUSY Cross Sections" figure of Table 2.

l194 figure 3: right: Is is correct that the last and next to last bin for the two signal models have exactly the same expected yield? This seems surprising as both bins have a different size and it is displayed in a log plot.

Response: The signal models shown have the correct values but your comment points out something missed by all other reviewers, and that the binning for the signal histograms is different in this one plot. It seems this is an oversight from a rebinning question in the ARC review -- the binning for signal model is now correct and this issue you've noticed is no more.

l196 why use a spectrum calculator? you set masses by hand later on? what determines the coupling of the LSP to the photon+gravitino. Is this fixed in your scan?

Response: More precisely M1 and M3 are set by hand, and the use of a spectrum calculator results in very small corrections to M(~t1); the spectrum calculator is also what determines the coupling of the NLSP to photons, as the bino will have some decays to Z bosons. For the range of bino masses discussed this decay to Z bosons is fairly uniform at about 20%. Lastly, this is done because it is the method used for previous photonic GMSB searches as well as being approved by the SUSY MC group.

l198: use m_{~t}

Response: See responses about naming top squark

l198 why this range? is it not favorable for reinterpretation to extend this range? (reference?)

Response: As low-mass binos are extremely disfavored, the lower mass range for stops has to be above that region or else the bino ceases to be the NLSP. The upper mass range is quite a bit higher than what is commonly seen as "natural" for stop masses, and is chosen due to observed mass reach from statistics available and computational requirements of extending it much further.

l199 why 100% binolike? what is the phenomenological consequence of this?

Response: The 'simplicity' of this choice is in the phenomological consequence that the charginos can be set to very high masses and not participate, and removes the possibility of W bosons in the decays. While this choice isn't completely realistic in terms of model-building, the results of a 100% bino-like choice are similar to the SMS scans in simplifying the interpretation of our di-photon selection.

l201 “their small values“: what exactly is the range of the “small” values?

Response: reworded better as "Both masses are stepped in 25 GeV increments up to 300 GeV and in 50 GeV increments at higher masses."

l202 is the stop2 also set to a high mass? or do you consider mixed stops when you say stop?

Response: Stop2 is also set to a very high mass (5 TeV) and we do not consider mixed stops.

l208 where are the expected limits? These can be important for any reinterpretation (That is, the colors in fig.4, not lines like in fig 5.)

Response: What is asked for is an additional plot like Figure 4, except for only the expected upper limits. Figure 5 shows the exclusion contour that results from such a plot, but we didn't show it. We will conside adding a another figure to the paper. See my email for the materials. We could certainly add a second plot to Figure 4 as an a/b thing. Up to you.

l209 why are the observed lower?

Response: The limits are lower (we exclude less than expected) because we actually see a slight excess, however it's easily within the 1 sigma band. You can plainly see this in Table 3 with 30 events in SR2 where the background is 24.1 -- however as it's a shape comparison it gets complicated in how to compare it.

l209 Figure 4: no decay as in Figure 5? and/or: l209 Figure 4: are the branching ratios of the decay included in the limits? if not 100%, is there a table with (mass-dependent?) branching ratios? l210 Figure 5: is this assuming 100% branching ratio? l210 Figure 5: which side of the contour is excluded? l210 figure 5: How do you derive a cross section from your model? more information needed? l216: isn't there still a model dependence which needs to be quoted for these numbers?

Response: There no legend in Figure 4 like the one in Figure 5. We will make them match. 'are the branching ratios of the decay included in the limits?' -- The branching ratios of the bino to photons/Zs are included in the acceptance and the limits. The precise values versus bino mass can be found in Figure 2 of reference [28]. 'is this assuming 100% branching ratio?' -- The branching of stops to tops is 100% due to the masses chosen in this model, while the branching ratio of bino to photon+gravitino is close to ~80% for most of these masses. 'which side of the contour is excluded?' -- The lower stop masses, below the diagonal "m_stop - m_bino < m_top". 'how do you derive a cross section from your model? more information needed?' -- Line 197 explains that NLO cross sections are calculated with PROSPINO. 'isn't there still a model dependence which needs to be quoted for these numbers?' -- Just before that, line 215, we say this is for binos,

l210 Figure 5: why is the label (top right) different from Figure 4 and Figure 3?

Response; Get Sasha to fix the labels.

l217 are there any acknowledgments?

Response: We will add the standard acknowledgements when finished.

*********************************************************************************************

Comments Set 4

Type A (English/Style/Formatting)

L4: Is “sparticlesa” a typo?

Response: corrected

L6: “Despite that…can avoid…” is correct but was a little hard to parse as a double-negative. Perhaps: “Such regions of SUSY parameter space can avoid introducing a new little-hierarchy problem, yet they have been left largely unexplored…”

Response: Changed to the suggested sentence

L7: You cite [17] in regards to the “little-hierarchy” problem, but that phrase does not appear in that article. (You are in good company though--Wikipedia’s entry on the “little hierarchy problem” does the same thing.) It appears the article is using an old name “The LEP Paradox” for this concept. If the journal allows a sentence of explanation in the citation that would help.

Response: The paper [17] referenced is the canonical paper to link to for the the little hierarchy problem. While this seminal paper does to refer to "little hierarchy", this is because the terminology has changed in subsequent papers. This reference [17] is the reference that most other papers use.

L21: “The lepton + jets final state of the ttbar pair…” The reader might initially think this meant both t’s decayed to lepton+jets, although you do clarify that later in the next sentence. It is not wrong as it is, but could be made rock solid by changing this to “The lepton + 4 jets final state of the ttbar pair”

Response: suggested change made

L31: “one and two-photons”. I leave it to you to decide if photon should be singular in this case and if the “one” should have a hyphen after it.

Response: Already change based on Comments Set 3.

L32: “dependance”-->”dependence”

Response: done

L19 & L34: Consistent use of “t squark” vs. “top squark”. Check elsewhere.

Response: change to top squark

L43: “compliments”-->”complements”

Response: done

L50: You are probably not allowed to change this text about the detector, but there is not a unique plane perpendicular to the beams (since they intersect at a small angle).

Response: Indeed but this may cause more confusion than it is worth to try to explain this complication.

L85: “The efficiency of tagging light or gluon jets…” It is not incorrect but perhaps the inverse, “rejection factor” reads better.

Response: Change made

L92: Subscript T and lower case p.

Response: Done

L92: “a looser criteria” --> “looser criteria” or “a looser criterion”

Response: looser criteria was chosen

L108-110: This sentence was hard to understand. Since I don’t know what it is saying, I cannot suggest an alternative.

Response: Addition of the word "uncertainties" to the last phrase of the sentence.

L129: “Zgamma”. Is that missing a / or a ( ) ?

Originally this was "Z(gamma)+jets" which was found to be confusing by others, so the notation -- where Z+jets and Z+gamma is used.

L129: “The first step is in…” Seems awkward. Delete “in”?

Response: sentence changed to make less awkward

L123: and rest of paragraph. It starts out talking about electrons that are identified as photons, saying that for muons it is of course negligible. But later in the paragraph you do have a scale factor for muon events from Z’s. Then the paragraph starting with L135 really gets into the electron->photon mis-ID. If I am understanding correctly, it seems like this needs to be organized such that the paragraph L123 is about the SF_(Z(gamma)) factor which applies to both, and then paragraph L135 would be about the additional SF_(e->g) factor just for electron events.

Response: We have attempted a rewording: The W+gamma and Z+gamma backgrounds are small in the muon+jets channel due t o the negligible misidentification of muons as photons. The misidentification of electrons as photons is considerable however, causing these processes to contribute to the signal regions at low ptmiss. This misidentification is observable as the peak at the Z boson mass in the invariant mass distribution of electron-photon pairs in the electron+jets channel of SR1. The measurement of this rate depends on the accurate estimation of the number of Z boson events in the electron+jets channel. To improve this estimation, a scale factor (SF) is measured for the normalization of Z+jets and Zgamma+jets MC. This is done for both the electron and muon channels. A dileptonic selection similar to the preselection is employed to measure this SF, requiring exactly two leptons of the same flavor instead of one, and with no selected photons required. A fit to the invariant mass of the dilepton system in data, using the Z(gamma)+jets MC as the signal template and all other MC backgrounds as the background template, gives a normalization for the Z(gamma)+jets MC, labeled SF_Z(gamma), for both electron and muon channels.

Next paragraph is largely unchanged but remove the sentence: "This second scale factor is not applied in the muon-signal regions, 146 as the misidentification rate of muons as photons is negligible."

Figure 1: X-axes. Isn’t mass normally lower-case m? (eg in PDG and your figures 4 & 5).

Response: consultand change if necessary.

Figure 1: Since there is such good agreement, are these being shown after the scale factor is applied? If not, then I am misunderstanding something.

Response: yes the figures are after the fits so the scale factor are applied.

L152: for parallel construction, remove “by”

Response: done

L164: You start the paragraph “With the above scale factors applied to each background…” But this comes after you discussed some backgrounds whose scale comes from the fit. It is potentially confusing. Do you mean to say “With the above scale factors or floating normalizations applied to each…”

Response: We drop "With the above scale factors applied to each background," entirely so this reads: "The control region offers a signal-free..."

Figure 2 caption: delete stray space in “distribution –based”. Also there is a missing space after a period.

Response: done

Table 2: You say “all backgrounds” have QCD and PDF uncertainties. But weren’t some normalized to the control regions (as you say in the caption as well)?

Response: The backgrounds do have QCD and PDF uncertainties. To find a systematic uncertainty on the normalizations, we fluctuate the distributions for all the other systematics and re-fit for a new scale factor. For QCD/PDF uncertainties, they of course fluctuate the SFs up/down to suit the data so the QCD/PDF systematics fall out of the SFs. In the limit-setting these effectively remove the QCD/PDF systematics from these normalized samples as you'd expect (along with any other MET-inclusive systematic such as luminosity), but in the scope of a paper reporting what the size of these uncertainties are, we decided to reporting their magnitudes.

Figure 3: It is hard to read the upper panes to see where the central value of the prediction is. Is it the top of the colored bars or is there a 1 sigma range displayed as is often done using shading. If the latter, then it is unclear why the data/MC for the last point in a is 1, but the data point is below the top of the colored bar. If the former, then I can’t see the different shading one would expect.

Response: One of the signal lines is maroon/purple and is close in color to the Diboson histogram color. If you look real closely, the data is right in the center of 1 sigma shaded area and so close to the black histogram central value line that it's nearly impossible to see -- thus why it's data/MC = 1. We will change the color of the maroon signal line at least to clarify the plot.

Figure 3: The last data point in b seems to be 0.02 events/GeV. The bin-width is 150 GeV. So that corresponds to 3 events. Let me know if that is wrong.

Response; The y-axis is difficult to distinguish but this is 2 events, 0.013/GeV. One event in electrons and one in muons were observed. A more detailed, MET-binned table was requested in the ARC review and can be seen in this twiki.

Figure 3: Upper right corners say (e/mu)+gamma+bjj but isn’t it (e/mu)+gamma+bjjj? Looking back over the paper I could not find the number of jets required stated explicitly but maybe I missed it. If you require 3 in addition to the b jet you should say it somewhere and give the kinematical limits.

Response: The text now says that we are asking for three jets, one of physics is tagged as a b.

[37]The title of the article has k_t but you said k_T.

Response: fixed

Type B (Strategy…)

L117. You reject tt+jets events that have a generator-level photon. Presumably that is because ttbar+photon are already generated and that would be double counting. The rate of rejection is about 1/alpha so seems about right. Are you sure that all such events are all already included in the ttbar+photon MC sample? If so, perhaps add “…to avoid double-counting” to make it clear.

Response: change made

L172 paragraph: By using the actual bin-by-bin disagreements in CR1 to assign uncertainties, do you risk over- or under-estimating the systematic error just by being lucky and unlucky. In other words, if this paper were indicating an excess corresponding to a discovery, would this method for assigning systematic uncertainty on the background be sufficient? And a question in the other direction: does this procedure include statistical fluctuations that inflate your systematic error too much and thus perhaps hide a discovery?

Response: This seemed to be a way to estimate uncertainties with some confidence. Indeed, there is always the danger of overestimation of uncertainties but these procedures were evaluated by the ARC and thought to be reasonable.

General: I did not see citations to prior work in the intro or in figures 4& 5. Perhaps this is the first such search ever? You alluded to something like that. If so, perhaps good to make it explicit that this is the first such search and no other prior exclusions are relevant. Although it would be surprising if there were no prior relevant limits of any kind by now.

Response; We've done as deepest a dive on this that we can as given in the comments above. We can find 'similar' results that are not completely compatible. We are always cautious about proving a negative for paper topics, there could always be some paper missed, but we have yet to find a 3rd-generation GMSB search with photons, or even a diphoton+b search besides ours.

*******************************************************************************************

Comments Set 5

Type-A

L2: “corresponds to a desirable theoretical option” —> “provides a theoretical approach” (“desirable” is imprecise; “corresponds” isn’t quite the right word)

Response: Sentence reworded

L3 : "recently-discovered Higgs boson mass" -> "recently discovered Higgs boson, with a mass of "

Response: done

L4: remove "a" at the end of "sparticlesa"

Response: done

L5: for standard model -> of standard model

Response: done

L5: remove "kept". In this model, they are light

Response: done

L14: Move the decay to after the word "decay".

Response: sentence reworded

L18-20: The last sentence of the paragraph clarifies the final clause of the sentence before, but this is not obvious from the structure. Consider reordering and/or rewording.

Response: final clause is reworded

L28: each event -> the event

Response: done

L29: , WHICH ARE referred to as ...

Response: done

L35: Move references to the end of the sentence

Response: done

L68: "divided by" -> "to the" (you already said it was a ratio)

Response: done

L68, L78, L84, L86: when < or \approx are used outside equations, please spell them out in words (“less than”,”roughly”) rather than using the symbols.

Response: partially done

L105: intersect -> overlap

Response: done

L107: "a way to" -> "a sample with which to"

Response: reworded

L158: remove "in short"

Response: done

L164: "offer a signal-free" -> "allow the"

Response: done

L216: “most stringest” —> “most stringent”

Response: done

Type-B

L6-8 : Consider rewording. I suspect you mean to say that despite this is a nice region of parameter space, it is largely uncovered but the text doesn't read that way. It would also be nice yo include some results which do cover it since in your conclusion, you claim these results are the most stringent. At the very least modify "Despite that" —> "Although"

Response: Change to "Although" and reword sentence

L19: you use "t-squark" and "top quark" in the same sentence. Stick to "t" or "top".

Response: "top squark" based on advice from English editor and the pub. committee chair.

L22: This is an odd place to slip in the fact that the analysis uses 19.7/fb of 8 TeV data. This should come earlier and be a sentence in its own right.

Response: moved the reference to the data earlier and reworded.

L29, L101, L103: “Misidentified photons” - consider replacing this terminology with a clearer wording. The term is defined, but it’s misleading because this wording would usually mean “photons misidentified as something” rather than (as is the case here) “something misidentified as photons”. This term only seems to be used a few times, so perhaps you can just spell it out specifically as “reconstructed photons with selection partially inverted” or similar. One instance where this terminoligy causes confusion is in L100-102 where the text defines "mis-identified" photons as failing either the shower energy distribution or hadron isolation. However, in lines 68-69 an object is said to have to have a photon-like energy distribution in order to be identified as a photon in the first place. You could be clearer how these objects are defined, are these objects that fail the shower energy distribution requirment but pass all the other requirments outlined in 65-69?

Response: Wehave changed places where misidentified photon was used to fake photon. We left case where the misidentified was used properly (such misidentified electron to photon rate or misidentified jets as photons.

L48-50: This should be moved to the next section, why describe this here?

Rseponse: We see no reason that this definition of ptmiss is better positioned in the reconstruction section than in the detector section.

L59: No need to list photons, electrons....

Response: removed photons and electrons.

L61: "in FastJet" -> "as in the FastJet toolkit"

Response: done

L61-62: It is incorrect to say that anti-kT jets are clustered in eta-phi. anti-kT uses rapidity (y) instead of eta. Avoid defining DeltaR here because the isolation cones in subsequent paragraphs probably do use dEta instead of dy.

Response:Reword line 60: "Jets are reconstructed by clustering PF particles using the anti-kt algorithm in FastJet using a distance parameter of 0.5, and their momenta are corrected..." and then move the definition of deltaR to line 70: "the scalar sum of pt within a cone of DeltaR = 0.3 (where DeltaR = sqrt(...)) ..."

L61: What does "use a distance parameter" mean?. Should say "Jets are reconstructed using a distance parameter of 0.5 "

Response: changed

L67: "supercluster" seems like CMS jargon, consider something else especially since its only used here.

Response: changed to ECAL photon cluster

L69-70 What is the cut on the isolation variable for photons? Please specify (as is done for muons and electrons later).

Response; Reword line 69 to "The photon isolation energies for neutral hadrons, charged hadrons, and other photons are calculated as the scalar sum of the pt of each type of PF candidate within a cone DeltaR = 0.3, where DeltaR = sqrt(...). The charged hadron isolation energy is required to be less than 15 GeV, the neutral hadron energy less than 3.5 GeV plus 4\% of the photon candidate's pt, and other photon isolation energy less than 1.3 GeV plus 0.5\% of the photon candidate's pt. Pileup corrections are..."

L74: here and L78, the objects dont "have an isolation". You should first define the isolation quantity and then say what the requirement on that quantity is for the electrons and muons.

Response: We have addressed this previously by rearrangement of the isolation remarks..

L79: Is this really momentum or pT?

Should be pt, ss we so desginate it as p_t

L79-80 The last sentence in this paragraph is not clear if the reader doesn’t already know what is intended. Suggest: “Looser lepton requirements are used to identify extra leptons, which are vetoed as described in Section 4.”

Response: reworded

L81-86 The medium working point (“CSVM”) is not defined in reference 41. Please either provide a reference that includes this working point, or remove the “medium”/“CSVM” terminology. It adds nothing without context, and you could simply say “The efficiency of the selection is…” without describing it as “medium”

Response: deleted the reference to CSVM and reworded the paragraph.

L97: Why refer to these as "candidate" photons?

Response: at this point we have only done a preselection. Therefore the photons are still candidates (Is this correct Brian?)

L99: In general its not clear whether this should be 2 or 2 or more photons in the signal region defition. In the control region, you use >=2, why not in the SR?

Response: Reword line 99 to say "SR2 two or more photon candidates.""

L103 “true candidate photons” sounds like it has something to do with MC truth, but I think you are referring to reconstructed photons passing the full selection. Please reword.

Response: reworded

L105 “very low signal acceptance” Can you quantify? The number appears later (it seems) when talking about the "signal-free" control regions but its out of context there.

Response: yes, we can quantify. The number appears later in the text. Th introduction of the remark about low signal content is pertinent to the general definiton of the CR1 and CR2 so we think it is necessary for the context here.

L108-110 I do not understand this sentence. You compare the effect of poorly-reconstructed objects on pTmiss resolution to the effect of background events. Are you talking about the effect on the distributions rather than the effect on the resolutions? Please rethink and rewrite this sentence.

Response the effect on the resolutions. We have rewritten the sentence:

L116 “generator-level photon” —> Does this only include photons in the matrix element, or are photons from hadronization (i.e. pi0 decay) also included? If so, under what circumstances?

Response:

L117: you should explicitly state that you reject the overlap from the tt+jets to avoid double counting.

Reponse: This has been done

L118-120 It would be useful to specify the number of extra partons allowed in the matrix element for each of these MadGraph samples

Response: We used just the standard samples from 2012. We have no way to recover the number of extra partons in these MadGraph samples. I don't know how appropriate or important it is to put something like this in a paper, and I wonder if this commenter just meant "it would be interesting".

L129 and beyond: the notation for Z+jets and Z+gamma events keeps changing, and it is therefore hard to follow which samples are used for different steps in the SF calculation. Specifically you have Z\gamma+jets for the first time on L129, then Z(\gamma)+jets for the first time on L133, and then in the Figure 2 captions you say Z/\gamma*+jets for the first time. Please use consistent notation everywhere for each sample, and if any terms are combinations of other samples then please define them.

Response: We believe that we have made the notation all consistent.

L129: when you first say you will compute a SF, later called SFZ(\gamma), you do not define what this SF is the ratio between. This is a data-driven Data-to-MC ratio, right? Say this and also specify which sample. An equation might be useful.

Response; We feel lines 128-134 are precisely dedicated to defining this There's no formula, it's just a template fit. You have two background distributions and the data, and the fit variable is the normalizations of each. .

L139: you use "signal" with two different meanings here which is confusing. For the fit, there is not reason to call one signal and one background. Just say you fit for the Z(gamma)+jets contribution.

Response: Reworded

L148: "A final concern" sounds improper. Maybe just say "The final controbution to the background is due to ..."

Response: Reworded

L165: what yields the product of acceptance and efficiency? remove this part of the sentence or reword

Reword ", yielding..." as: ", with a signal contamination of less than 1%."

L170: I wouldn't say this agreement is good. Do you have a number for this?

Response: See the goodness of fit numbers in the responses to statistics committee.

L173 “the bin-by-bin difference in CR1” … the difference between what and what? The number of events in Data and the sum of MC? An equation might also be useful here.

Response: Between the data and MC background Have so indicated in the text.

L174: I worry here that some systematic is missing in CR2 since there is a clear trend in the data/MC. How do the shape systematics compare in this region (eg JES?). Do they cover this disagreement, i.e are they included in the systematic error band? If not you should state it and include such a systematic in the plots.

Response: The red shaded error bars in Figure 2b do indeed include all systematic uncertainties and the statistical uncertainties from the limited MC sample sizes in CR2. The counting errors on the observed data are also very significant when compared to this difference, so if there is some systematic mis-modelling of the MET distribution in CR2 causing the trend it would not be truly observable without more data; even a single additional data event in the largest MET bin would alter this trend. We explicitly make this comment in the text, that we cannot distinguish between systematic mis-modelling of MET in CR2 from statistical fluctuations.

L175 How exactly are the CR1 results “used” for SR1 and SR2? Is that what the next sentence (“Additional…”) is specifying? If so this is not clear from the language.

Response; Lines 172-174 should specify how CR1 is used.. A rewording for a previous comment was: "the difference in CR1 between data and background is taken as a systematic uncertainty in the signal regions, applied bin-by-bin as a (1 - Data/Background) percent uncertainty.

L189-191. As the estimated uncertainties on the scale factors are not mentioned elsewhere, this sentence needs to be reworded to something like: “Estimated uncertainties on trigger and object selections are propogated to systematic uncertainties on the analysis by… ; these include b-tagging, electron and muon ID and triggers, and photon ID.”

Response: Reworded

L200-201: This sentence is very clumsy. You can say "Signal points are evaluated in 25 GeV steps in both m_bino and m_t-squark for values smaller than X and in 50 GeV steps otherwise" and please state at what point (X) the switch from 25 GeV to 50 GeV increments happens.

Response: To a previous comment reworded to "Both masses are stepped in 25 GeV increments up to 300 GeV and in 50 GeV increments at higher masses."

L206: You can see an excess and still set limits. Make this into two sentences. 1) No excess is observed. 2) limits are placed....

Response: Done

L216-217: As before, a comparison to other results should be mentioned in the text to make such a statement unless this is the "first" in which case it is by definition the best.

Response: See above responses to other comments. Several somewhat similar literature searches were done but nothing precisely for diphoton+b or stops in GMSB if you consider GMSB stops too different from non-GMSB stops.

Figures and Tables: Figure 2 and 3: For “stat + syst uncertainties” in the caption, is the “stat uncertainty” the uncertainty on the MC? Please specify.

BRAD: It is the stastical uncertainty from finite MC sample sizes.

Figure 4/5: use the same notation as in the text (t-squark, with a hyphen!)

Response: Dealt with

Table 1 caption: "The first scale factor is applied only in the muon+jets channel" sounds like you don't apply it in the electron channel. You should say "Only the first scale factor is applued in the muon+jets channel"

Response: done

Table 1 caption: The captions says that both the scale factors are applied to the W+gamma background but I can't find anywhere in the main body of text where it says the SFZ scale factor is to be applied to the W+gamma sample. In line 129 this is said to be used to correct the Z+jets and Zgamma+jets normalizations but no mention of the W.

Response: We remove the Wgamma+jet inclusion from line 123 and Table 1's caption. Considering how a a Wgamma --> e+gamma+MET jet would look if it had a mis-ID'd electron as a photon. You'd would have two photons but no lepton, so you don't ever get these.

Table 2 caption: This makes two statements about dominant uncertainties that seem to contradict each other. For the “dominant rate uncertainty” what do you mean by “despite that . . . are allowed to float freely . . .”. Do you mean that this uncertainty does not dominate because of the fit? Please rethink and reword. Likewise, for the last sentence the word “reflect” is ambiguous. Can you not say “The dominant uncertainties are …” in a more straightforward way?

Response: Reword the caption along the lines of: "Summary of systematic uncertainties, where check marks indicate shape uncertainties binned in ptmiss. The dominant uncertainties are those derived from control region. In the calculation of upper limits, the normalizations of tt+jets and tt+gamma backgrounds are additionally allowed to float freely."

Table 2 caption: Can you explain the check marks better? Are you saying that these items are shape uncertainties, or that they have both a shape and a normalization component? Please reword.

Response: see above rewording of this caption. No check mark means it's inclusive of MET, and check mark means it's a shape uncertainty.

Table 2: What are these uncertainty percentages on? The quantities in question, or the normalization of the pTmiss plots, or the limits? It’s not clear. The notes column is also not easy to understand for the control regions; better to simply explain these points in the text, and have the “Notes” column specify only which distributions are affected.

Response: They are percentages of the quantities in question, ie what's in the notes column. To respond to their suggestion, we change Table 2's "Notes" to "Processes affected", and change the notes indication to just say "All backgrounds" for the control region notes.

**************************************************************************************

Comments Set 6

abstract and elsewhere - isn't it "stop squarks" rather than "top squarks"?

Response: Suggested name is top squark

line 4 - (sparticles)

Response: Corrected

line 23, 24 - not obvious how the requirement of exactly one isolated lepton would minimize contributions from multijet and gamma+jet backgrounds

Response: High quality leptons area rarity in QCD multijet events or gamma+jet events. Requring an isolated lepton is a sure-fire way to remove QCD.

line 28 - maybe "a nominal isolation" better than "the nominal isolation" since this has not been described yet

Response: changed

line 45 - "remaining barrel photons"? - early-converting photons?

Response: added converted adjective

line 82 - "CSV" not defined

Response: A reference has been added

line 92 - PT should be p

Response: Done

line 117 - "are rejected" - from the simulation? from the sample? as signal?

Response: from the simulation of the ttbar +gamma sample

Table 1 description - "Only the first scale factor is applied for the..." rather than "The first scale factor is applied only in the..."

Response: done

line 159,160 - remove either "as such" or "therefore"

Response done:

line 178-182 - why should CR1 be the same as SR1 (unless you have already assumed beforehand that there should be no signal)?

Response: This is largely the expectation from the study of signal level in the backgrounds. The signal level is quite small in the signal MC after SR1 cuts compared to the background level after

Table 2 description - Vgamma not defined

Response: Vgamma is no longer used.

- "The dominant rate..." - not clear; in fact, not grammatically a sentence - "The dominant uncertainties..." - not clear. Is this reflected in the table content?

Response: previous commenter wanted this re-written and we did, fixing the grammar.

Figures 4 and 5 - i suggest the labels on the top right hand corner ("19.7 fb...") should be similar

Response: We agree and will fix.

- m not defined

Response: replaced by m top squark

line 214 - "Cross-section..."

Response: corrected

reference [26] is a repeat of [21] reference [27] is a repeat of [22]

Response: corrected

*******************************************************************************************

Comments Set 7

L4 spartoclesa ==> sparticles

Response: done

L32 dependance -> dependence

Response: done

L35 general gauge-mediated [26–31] (GGM) SUSY ==> general gauge-mediated (GGM) SUSY (26-31] or general gauge-mediated (GGM) [26-31] SUSY.

Response: done

L49: reconstucted -> reconstructed

Response: done

L51 contructed -> constructed

Response: done

L63 particle flow ==> PF

Response: done

L92 PT ==> p_T

Response: done

Fig.1 (c) : Remove a canvas boundary box

Response: done

caption: …in e\gamma for …==> not clear!, is it ‘.. In M(e,\gamma) for ..’ ?

Response: it refers to M(e, gamma), changed

L131: Additional third leptons are still vetoed -> Additional third lepton is still vetoed

Response: changes

L155 ttbar \gamma ==> tuba +\gamma

Response: changed

Fig.2 caption: distribution -based ==> distribution-based

Response: changed

L179 distribtuions -> distributions

Response: done

L191 ID ==> do you need to defend this somewhere? Please double check this with pubcom.

Response: We reference the lepton ID performance papers from CMS.

Table.2 (and Table 3) Caption: V\gamma ==> V has not been defined.

Response: VGamma is not used now used in the text.

L198, Table.3,

Response: I do not find the typo that this comment refers to.

L204, Fig.4(caption) m_top squark == m_t spark (for consistency; see the x-axis label & legends on Fig 4 and 5)

Response: Suggested name is m_{top squark}.

Table.3 (460_175) ==> (460,175)

Response: done

L199 NLSP has been already defined in L10

Response: deleted NLSP redefinition

L216 stringest -> stringent

Response: done

==================== Comments on references:

[1] four-dimensions ==> four dimensions

Response: done

[2] Extension of the Algebra of Poincare Group Generators and Violation of p Invariance ==> Extension of the algebra of poincare group generators and violation of p invariance (use non-capital letters due to CMS guidelines) 323–326 ==> 323 Also, doi is missing

Response: Title corrected. There seems to be no doi assigned.

[3] 438–440 ==> 438

Response: done

[8] L. J. Hall, J. D. Lykken, ==> L. Hall, J. Lykken,

Response: done

[10] Collaboration Collaboration ==> Collaboration 30–61 ==> 30

Response: done

[11] 1–29 ==> 1

Response: done

[12] (2015) no. 5, 212, ==> (2015) 212,

Response: done

[13] pp ==> \it pp C76 (2016), no. 1, 6, ==> C 76 (2016) 6, (note: also ’C’ shouldn’t be bold; need a space between C and 76)

Response: done

[14] ATLAS, CMS Collaboration ==> ATLAS Collaboration and CMS Collaboration Combined Measurement of the Higgs Boson Mass in pp Collisions at … Experiments ==> Combined measurement of the Higgs boson mass in pp collisions at … experiments (use non-capital letters due to CMS guidelines)

Response: done

[15] NLSP ==> Next-to-Lightest Supersymmetric Particle

Response: done

[16] The Status of GMSB After 1/fb at the LHC ==> The status of GMSB after 1/fb at the LHC

Response: done

[17] 2000. 2000. ==> 2000, (2000).

Response: done

[18] A Phenomenological Model of Particle Physics Based on Supersymmetry ==> A phenomenological model of particle physics based on supersymmetry B110 ==> B 110 (note: ‘B’ shouldn’t be bold; a space between B and 110)

Response: done

[19] Supersymmetric Extension of the SU(3) x SU(2) x U(1) Model ==> Supersymmetric extension of the SU(3) × SU(2) × U(1) model B113 (1982) 175–179, ==> B 113 (1982) 175, (note: also ‘B’ shouldn’t be bold; a space between B and 113)

Response: done

[20] L. Alvarez-Gaume ==> L. Alvarez-Gaumé

Response: : We will correct \'{e} --

Low-Energy Supersymmetry ==> Low-energy supersymmetry B207 ==> B 207 (note: ‘also B’ shouldn’t be bold; a space between B and 207)

Response: done

[21] General Gauge Mediation ==> General gauge mediation 143–158 ==> 143

Response: done

[22] Exploring General Gauge Mediation ==> Exploring general gauge mediation

Response: done

[23] Phenomenology of Pure General Gauge Mediation ==> Phenomenology of pure general gauge mediation

Response: done

[24] R ==> \it R

Response: done

[26] This reference has been used already in ref [21]. Please remove [26].

Response: done

[27] This reference has been used already in ref [22]. Please remove [27].

Response: done

[29] This reference has been used already in ref [16]. Please remove [29].

Response: done

[32] Performance of Photon Reconstruction and Identification with the CMS Detector in Proton- Proton Collisions at sqrt(s) = 8 TeV ==> Performance of photon reconstruction and identification with the CMS detector in proton-proton collisions at √s = 8 TeV remove ‘no. 08’

Response: done

[34] Collaboration Collaboration ==> Collaboration Particle-Flow Event Reconstruction in CMS and Performance for Jets, Taus, and MET ==> Particle-flow event reconstruction in CMS and performance for jets, taus, and E_T^{miss} Technical Report CMS-PAS-PFT-09-001, CERN, 2009. Geneva, Apr, 2009. ==> CMS Physics Analysis Summary CMS-PAS-PFT-09-001, 2009.

Response: done

[35] Collaboration Collaboration ==> Collaboration Commissioning of the Particle-flow Event Reconstruction with the first LHC collisions recorded in the CMS detector ==> Commissioning of the particle-flow event reconstruction with the first LHC collisions recorded in the CMS detector Technical Report CMS-PAS-PFT-10-001, CERN, 2010, 2010. ==> CMS Physics Analysis Summary CMS-PAS-PFT-10-001, 2010

Response: done

[36] Collaboration Collaboration ==> Collaboration Commissioning of the Particle-Flow reconstruction in Minimum-Bias and Jet Events from pp Collisions at 7 TeV ==> Commissioning of the particle-flow reconstruction in minimum-bias and jet events from pp collisions at 7 TeV Technical Report CMS-PAS-PFT-10-002, CERN, Geneva, 2010. ==> CMS Physics Analysis Summary CMS-PAS-PFT-10-002, 2010

Response: done

[40] It seem that this reference is out of dated. Please replace this reference by the most recent one (JINST publication)

Response; We have updated ref 40.

Brad: try https://inspirehep.net/search?p=find+eprint+1502.02701

[41] Collaboration Collaboration ==> Collaboration b Jet ==> b jet Technical Report CMS-PAS-BTV-09-001, CERN, 2009. Geneva, Jul, 2009. ==> CMS Physics Analysis Summary CMS-PAS-BTV-09-001, 2009

Response: done

[44] 0711 ==> 11

Response: done was

[45] Was == > Z. Wa̧ s tau lepton decay ==> τ lepton decay KKMC / KORALB / KORALZ /... status report ==> KKMC/KORALB/KORALZ /... status report Nucl.Phys.Proc.Suppl. 98 (2001) 96–102, ==> Nucl. Phys. Proc. Suppl. 98 (2001) 96,

Response: Correction to Was and tau made

[46] Min-Bias and the Underlying Event at the LHC ==> Min-bias and the underlying event at the LHC Acta Phys.Polon. B 42 (2011) 2631–2656, ==> ACTA Phys. Polon. B 42 (2011) 2631,

Response: done

[47] Comput.Phys.Commun. 176 (2007) 426–455, ==> Comput. Phys. Commun. 176 (2007) 426,

Response: done

[48] Please check dos link; it’s broken. It should be 10.1016/j.cpc.2005.01.012 (hyper link: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010465505000822) the {MSSM} ==> the MSSM Computer Physics Communications 168 (2005), no. 1, 46 – 70, ==> Comput. Phys. Commun. 168 (2005) 46,

Response: done

[48] a Fortran ==> A Fortran

Response: done

[49]Hopker ==> Ho ̈ pker

Response: done

[50] Please check a format you used for this reference with Pubcom.

Response: This reference has been removed and replace with other references so this comment is now moot.

**************************************************************************

Comments Set 8

Duplicate of Set 7

***************************************************************************

Comments Set 9

first, not related to statistics, there are a number of typos in the draft. I have not carefully looked for them, but for instance: sparticlesa (l4), "distribution-based" (additional space) and "uncertainty. The" (missing space) in the caption of Fig. 2, ...

Response: These issues are addressed in responses in other comments sets

Fig.1: what is "Bkg" in the legend? It would deserve a proper definition in the caption. Please fix the style of the plots, e.g. why is there a border around the third panel? Why are systematic uncertainties not included in the ratio of the data to the expectation in the bottom panel, contrary to other similar plots in the paper? Why is the x-axis starting at a different place for the three panels? Why is there a bin with some observed data and zero expectation in the first panel?

Response: We have defined "Bkg" from the legend as "other dilepton and egamma backgrounds" in the Fig. caption. We have added systematics to this plot and fixed the x-axis and other problems.

The data / expectation agreement looks very bad. Have you performed a goodness-of-fit (GOF) test? You should run one and mention it in the text.

Response: When the systematic errors are included the GOF tests are acceptable. We have now included these in the plots. If we include all the uncertainties than these three Fig. 1 plots each show a KS-test of over 0.96.

Response continued: To be more specific

Figure 1a) GOF: Chi2/NDOF with systematics 5.38 Kolmogorov-Smirnov with systematics 0.96

Figure 1b) GOF: Chi2/NDOF with systematics 6.38) Kolmogorov-Smirnov with systematics 0.99)

Figure 1c) GOF: Chi2/NDOF with systematics 0.17) Kolmogorov-Smirnov with systematics 1.0)

l.170: you claim that the data-expectation agreement in the CR2 is "good" (and "poor" in the caption of Fig. 2...). Please quantify with a GOF test. The corresponding statement in the caption of Fig. 2 is really too hand-waving at the moment... Caption of Fig. 2: does the uncertainty (by the way, be more precise about how and where this uncertainty is shown in the plots) include the "CR1 disagreement"? Also, does this uncertainty only include the uncertainties related to the ptmiss modeling, or also those related to ID, pileup, trigger, etc. ?

Response: Kolmogorov-Smirnov test between the data and MC in CR1 gives 0.828185 and in CR2 gives 0.657578 which is acceptable. .

Response: The systematics included in Figure 2 are everything listed Table 2 except for the "CR1 disagreement" and "SR1/CR1" and "SR2/SR1". So the "CR1 disagreement" isn't included, but ID/pileup/trigger systematics are included.

l.172: "the performance of the ptmiss modeling"

Response: changed

l.178-182: not clear what is referred to here. What are the CR1-SR1 and SR1-SR2 differences mentioned? Differences between which quantities?

Response; We have reworded lines 172-174 as: "the difference in CR1 between data and background is taken as a systematic uncertainty in the signal regions, applied bin-by-bin as a (1 - Data/Background) percent uncertainty. For lines 178-182, the same exact calculation is done comparing CR1 to SR1 and comparing SR1 to SR2.

l.185: why are systematic uncertainties affecting the ptmiss modeling assumed to be completely correlated?

Response: This was a typo. They are uncorrelated. corrected.

Fig. 3: you have a few bins with a low event count. If not the case already, please use error bars with a correct coverage for Poisson data (see https://twiki.cern.ch/twiki /bin/view/CMS/PoissonErrorBars).

Response; We will add the Poisson errors.

l.208: this section needs to be expanded. First, please refer to the "CLs criterion", not "method", and prefer citing A. Read and T. Junk's papers (see https://twiki.cern.ch/twiki /bin/view/CMS/StatisticsReferences). Also, you need to give more information about the limit setting procedure. What is the test statistic used? Is it binned or unbinned? How are systematic uncertainties treated? etc.

The replacement references for Lyons are: @ARTICLE{CLS1, author = "Read, A. L.", title = "Presentation of search results: the CLs technique ", journal = "J. Phys.", volume = "G28", year = "2002", pages = "2693", doi = "10.1088/0954-3899/28/10/313", } @ARTICLE{CLS2, author = "Junk, T.", title = "Confidence level computation for combining searches with small statistics", journal = "Nucl. Instrum. Meth.", volume = "A434", year = "1999", pages = "435", eprint = "9902006", archivePrefix = "arXiv", primaryClass = "hep-ex", }

Response: We have reworded line 208 as: "...search regions using the CL_{s} criterion [ref 1][ref 2]. The test statistic is constructed as the product of likelihood ratios in bins of ptmiss. Systematic uncertainties are included as nuisance parameters in the signal and background ptmiss distributions. For systematic uncertainties affecting only the normalization of signal or background processes, log-normal distributions are taken as the probability density distributions for their associated nuisance parameter. Systematic uncertainties affecting the shape of the ptmiss distributions are taken as shaped uncertainties for both their upwards and ownwards fluctuations. To allow the ttbar and ttbar+gamma normalizations to float freely in the upper limit calculation, a single \pm 100\% nuisance parameter is introduced with a log-uniform probability density distributions for their normalization. Statistical uncertainties resulting from limited MC statistics available are included as nuisance parameter as prescribed in [reference barlow+beeston][reference barlow+beeston 2]"

Response: Where Barlow+Beeston reference is @article{BarlowBeeston, author = "Roger Barlow and Christine Beeston", title = "{Fitting using the Monte Carlo samples}", journal = "Computer Physics Communications", volume = "77", pages = "219-228", year = "1993", SLACcitation = "%%CITATION = INSPIRE-599622;%%", }

l.209: I would link the observation that upper limits are "slightly lower than expected limits" to a upward fluctuation in the data.

Response: We had an upward fluctuation in the data. It's hard to see from a shape-based analysis but the observed upper limits are lower than the expected.

Fig. 4: please unify the style of the two plots: same up right labels outside of the frame, same mention of the decay chain as in the bottom panel. I'm also confused by the bottom panel. What does "observed/expected range of mean at 68% CL" mean? I thought we were talking about 95% CL exclusion contours? How are they obtained?

Response: The Fig. 5 caption has been clarified and the 68%CL and 95% CL have been attributed to the correct items.

l.26: are excluded at 95% CL.

Response: done

***************************************************************************

Comments Set 10

PHYSICS COMMENTS:

- LL2-3: the sentence is odd, in particular why "desirable theoretical option"? Suggest rephrasing as: "Supersymmetry (SUSY) [1-9] is an elegant theoretical solution to the hierarchy problem confirmed by the recent discovery [11,10,10a] of the Higgs boson with a mass of 125 GeV [14]." Note that the Higgs discovery references should be ordered as they appear in the PLB; there is an additional "long" discovery paper from CMS [10a] that needs to be added. References [12,13] are irrelevant to your argument, so drop them and only use Ref. [14] for the Higgs boson mass.

Response: Done

- LL5-6: the formulation is incorrect; the lightness of the top squark, and particularly the higgsino has nothing to do with the largeness of their couplings to the Higgs bosons. The higgsino mass is light because it induces tree-level corrections to the Higgs boson mass that are a product of the parameter [known to be large] and their higgsino mass. The top squark is light because it generates one-loop-level corrections to the Higgs boson mass proportional to its mass squared. Moreover, you assume that the NLSP is bino, rather than higgsino. There is absolutely nothing "natural" in the bino mass being light, particularly below the top squark mass. This is an additional assumption explained in Ref. [15], which has nothing to do with CERN Accelerating science naturalness per se. All of this needs to be properly explained in the opening paragraph of the introduction, which the current text fails on more than one level.

Response: Wee simply say we're interested in models where anything with large Higgs coupling is light. The commentator says that the reason they're light is because the product of their Higgs coupling and their masses are low, but that seems to be basically what we think we have said said? While the commentator is quite a bit more specific by explicitly describes WHY low masses are achieved, we simply say we're interested in a search for stops that are light for any reason.

Response continued: Also, we say nothing about higgsinos so the comments on the higgsinos seems off the mark. The second half of the commentators remarks seems basically to say he would rather see a search for stops+higgsinos because of "other reasons", do we really need to dedicate page-space to explaining why we didn't search for something different? I suppose the one thing we could do is find a reference to point to stops+binos better. I sadly can't remember at all how we kept the higgsino mass high in this model.

Response: In conclusion, we do not feel that we have said anything wrong. The comments seem to address issues that we never mentioned and therefore could not be wrong about. The preference of the commentator for stop+higgsinos is reasonable but this is a completely different search than what we are describing. We feel the search for light stops in bino-like GMSB, or vice-versa the case for bino-NLSP in light stop GMSB is a valid objective. It is noteworthy that none of the other 11 comment sets challenged our choice of a analysis.

- LL16-17: the sentence is incorrect as in your setup bino pairs could also be produced at the LHC. You need to rephrase the sentence as follows: "Furthermore, if the top squark is the only colored sparicle sufficiently light ..."

Response: done

- LL42-43: move the sentence about the forward calorimetry just before the one about the muons not to break the flow of the text.

Response: done

- L69: ... photon-like spatial distribution of its energy [32].

Response: done

- LL75-79: move the clause "Electrons are ... of their momentum" before the sentence starting on L72, as the entire logic of the paper is to talk about electrons first and muons second.

Response: done

- L113: ... using the leading order (LO) ...

Response: used "tree level" instead

- LL114,120: give full version of Pythia (6.426 ?), powheg (v1.0), and tauola here. On L120, make sure that the tune you used its indeed Z2 and Z2*, which was the Run 1 default tune. If you used Z2*, please update the reference too.

Response: We used pythia 6.426 and powheg v1.0. The tauola version is the "May 05 2009" version. The Tune was "Z2*" and the star/asterisk has been included. For the reference for Z2* we reference @article{Chatrchyan:2011id, author = "Chatrchyan, Serguei and others", title = "{Measurement of the Underlying Event Activity at the LHC with $\sqrt{s}= 7$ TeV and Comparison with $\sqrt{s} =

1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 9$ TeV}", collaboration = "CMS", journal = "JHEP", volume = "09", year = "2011", pages = "109", doi = "10.1007/JHEP09(2011)109", eprint = "1107.0330", archivePrefix = "arXiv", primaryClass = "hep-ex", reportNumber = "CERN-PH-EP-2011-059, CMS-QCD-10-010", SLACcitation = "%%CITATION = ARXIV:1107.0330;%%"

}

- LL111-122: specify the PDF used in the signal and background simulation.

Response: The PDF used is CTEQ6M. Any other details should be found at: https://twiki.cern.ch/twiki/bin/viewauth/CMS/StandardModelCrossSectionsat8TeV#Central_values_and_errors

- L129 and further in the text: the notation Z( )+jets that you introduce later is very misleading, as it reads as either Z or photon, which is not what you mean. You need to specify on this line that the Z+jets and Z+ +jets backgrounds are collectively referred to as Z(+ )+jets background and changed the notation on LL133,134,139,144, and Table 1 caption, as well as Fig. 1 legends.

Response: We have changed all the Zgammajets notation to make it clearer (we hope0 what is meant by the text.

- L155 and multiple places later in the text it appears that you always have an extra space after in all constructs like +jets, + s; please fix.

Response: Done

- Figures 2-3: Z/ +jets in the legends should be Z+jets to match the text.

Response: Comment dealt with

- L197: give versions of {\sc decay} and {\sc prospino} used.

Response; SDECAY version should be 1.2 and PROSPINO version should be 2.1. Added to the latex.

- L206: the sentence is an example of a classical statistical flip-flop and needs to be rephrased a la: "No significant excess of events is observed beyond the SM expectation. The 95\% confidence ..."

Response: Already addressed by a previous comment.

- L208: give all the standard CL_s citations: Junk, Read, Cowan [if you used asymptotic CLs]. Current Ref. [50] is not original and can be removed.

Response: The following references have been added to replace Lyons: @ARTICLE{CLS1, author = "Read, A. L.", title = "Presentation of search results: the CLs technique ", journal = "J. Phys.", volume = "G28", year = "2002", pages = "2693", doi = "10.1088/0954-3899/28/10/313", } @ARTICLE{CLS2, author = "Junk, T.", title = "Confidence level computation for combining searches with small statistics", journal = "Nucl. Instrum. Meth.", volume = "A434", year = "1999", pages = "435", eprint = "9902006", archivePrefix = "arXiv", primaryClass = "hep-ex", }

- Figures 3-4: the axis and diagonal line labels should say to match the text. Fig. 5 caption should be expanded to say: "The region to the left of the exclusion contour and below γ γ γ tt¯ tt¯ tt¯ γ γ∗ mtopsquark the dotting line is excluded by this analysis."

Response: These &#numbers; characters are just messed up unicode characters. These symbols should be: γ γ γ tt¯ tt¯ tt¯ γ γ∗ Since we are unclear what is being suggested, as a guess as to correcting what is missing, we have added the comment to the figure 5 caption: "The region to the left of the exclusion contour and below the dotting line is excluded by this analysis." We have independently modified some of thee legend of the figures so we may have fixed what the comment refers to.

- LL217-218: the Acknowledgement section is completely amiss; please end a standard one for regular papers.

Response: A standard acknowledgements section will be added.

STYLE COMMENTS:

Abstract, L6: using a sample of proton-proton collisions;

Response: done

Introduction: L4: (sparticles);

Response: done

L9: In this paper, we;

Response: done

L10: the next-to-lightest sparticle (NLSP);

Response: done

L11: the lightest spartcile (LSP).

Response: done

L15: strongly interacting sparticles.

Response: already done

L19: each top squark;

Response: sentence has been reworded.

L22: Based on a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity 19.7 fb of;

Response: done

L23: drop "being";

Response: done

L31: in the one- and two-photon signal regions.

Response: changed

L32: dependence;

Response: already taken care of

The CMS Detector: L36: The CMS detector;

Response: none

L53: The high-level trigger processor farm;

Response: done

L56: add a comma before "such";

Response: done

Event and Object Reconstruction: L58: Event and object reconstruction; −1 CTED

Response: none

L60: particle-flow (PF) algorithm [34-35]. [Ref. [36] is not among the standard two references to the PF algorithm, so drop it.]

Response: done

L61: [37], as implemented in {\sc FastJet} [38]. [Also, give the FastJet version here.]

Response: done

L61: in the -- [en-dash] plane;

This is a typo. This has been fixed

L63: All PF candidates;

Response: done

LL79-80: a veto against dole-ton backgrounds.

Response: done

L81: The combined secondary vertex (CSV) algorithm;

Response: done

LL84-85: of the CSVM requirement is (20\%) for b quark (c quark) jets.

Response: sentence already rephrased so that comment is not pertinent

Analysis Strategy: L87: Analysis strategy;

Response: none

L88: single-electron or single-muon trigger;

Response: already taken care of

L92: and isolation sum values;

Response: done

L94; must be tagged as originating from a b quark using the CSVM working point of the tagger.

Response: partially responded to

LL98-99: are defined as SR1, containing one photon candidate, and SR2, with two photon candidates.

Response: done

L100: shower energy distribution or charged-hadron isolation;

Response: done

LL103,104: true -> genuine;

Response: done

L114: for parton showering and fragmentation.

Response: done

LL118-119: including V+jets, single top quarks, +V, and V+ processes, where V stands for a W or Z boson.

Response: we like the present sentence as it stands

L120: {\sc powheg} 1.0 [44] generator;

Response: done

L123: The Z+jets and V+ backgrounds;

Response: prefer the present sentence

L131: Additional leptons;

Response: done

LL134,136,Table 1 heading, Fig. 1 caption: use Roman for "SF" and its subscript, i.e. SF , SF ; η \phI ≈ 70% pT tt¯ γ γ Zγ eγ

Response: done (I think)

LL135,144,145,147,164: since you introduced the acronym SF on L129, use it in each of these lines;

Response: done

L142: b tagging requirement;

Response: done

L145: in the muon signal regions;

Response: done

Table 1 caption, L3: V+ backgrounds.

Response: We have used Z+gamma instead of V+gamma and prefer this.

Fig. 1 caption, L2: the text looks garbled, I think you need to remove "in "; with the b tagging;

Response: OK

L152: radiation and jets misidentified as photons.

Response: already done

L155: +jets and + events;

Response: done

L157: within the statistical uncertainties in the;

Response: done

L167: charged-hadron isolation;

Response: done

L170: between data and simulation is good;

Response: done

L171: the very limited number of data events observed in CR2. [Statistics is jargon in this context.]

Response: sentence reworded

Fig. 2 caption, L1: of data and simulated events; L3: delete "are shown"; between data and simulation in CR1; LL4-5: The worse agreement; L6: add a space before "The ratios"; L8: systematic components.

Response: done

L174: limited and is not sensitive to systematic differences;

Response: done

Results and interpretation: L187: based on the uncertainties;

Response: done

LL188-189: functions (PDFs) and factorization and renormalization scales [these are not QCD scale!];

Response: done

L189" and jet energy scale (JES).

Response: done

LL190-191: uncertainty in the Sys, including;

Response: sentence revised

L191: electro n and muon identification and triggers, and photon identification.

Response: phrase revised

Table 2 caption, L3: add a comma before "used"; γ eγ bart tt¯ γ

Response: done

Table 2 body, first column: Integrated luminosity; Lepton ID/trigger; Renormalization and factorization scales; PDFs; Control region discrepancy; SR1/CR1 ratio, SR2/SR1 ratio; SUSY cross sections.

Response: done

L193: to the SM background;

Response: done

L194: each signal region, as shown in Fig. 3.

Response: done

L196: {\sc SuSpect} 2.41;

Response: done

L197: use {\sc decay} and {\sc prospino};Table 3 caption, L2: (460,175); L3: The first group of uncertainties is statistical, followed;

Response: done

LL198-199: The neutrino NLSP is assumed;

Response: done

L205: limits the sensitivity of this mass range.

Response: done

Summary: L213: top quark pair and one or two photons.

Response: done

L214: Upper limit on signal cross section are;

L216: most stringent exclusions;

Response: done

References: Refs. [2,3,10,11,18,19,21,40,45-48]: don't give a page range; just the first page.

Response: done

Ref. [2]: add missing doi reference.

Response: We are unable to find a doi reference.

Refs. [2,3]: typeset the journal in square brackets properly, e.g. [{\it Pisma Zh. Eksp. Teor. Fiz\/} {\bf 16} (1972) 621].

Response: eliminated the redundant reference

Refs. [10,34-36,41]: "Collaboration" is spelled twice.

Response: fixed

Refs. [12,13]: drop as irrelevant.

Response: done

Ref. [14]: ATLAS and CMS Collaborations.

Response: done

Refs. [18-20]: typeset the volume letter separately from the volume number and not in boldface.

Response: done

Ref. [29]: identical to Ref. [16]; please replace.

Response: done

Ref. [32]: fix "sort(s)" in the title; remove ", no. 08,".

Response: done

Ref. [34-36,41]: make all the PAS references look the same in terms of the way how the year, month, and place are displayed; Ref. [36] does it in the best way.

Response: done

Ref. [36]: remove as unneeded.

Response: done

Ref. [37]: anti- in the title to match the original title.

Response: done

Ref. [40]: replace with the recent EGM paper.

Response: done

Ref. [41]: replace with the BTV paper.

Response: We are not sure what replacement is being asked for. There's a paper publication for 7 TeV at https://arxiv.org/abs/1211.4462 But not for 8 TeV which has a public PAS at http://cds.cern.ch/record/1581306?ln=en -- since that is better than the 2009 reference we use that may be what is being requested. So we will use @techreport{CMS-PAS-BTV-13-001, title = "{Performance of b tagging at sqrt(s)=8 TeV in multijet, ttbar and boosted topology events}", institution = "CERN", collaboration = "CMS Collaboration", address = "Geneva", number = "CMS-PAS-BTV-13-001", year = "2013", reportNumber = "CMS-PAS-BTV-13-001", url = "http://cds.cern.ch/record/1581306", }

Ref. [44]: JHEP {\bf 11} (2007) 070.

Response: done

Refs. [45-47]: se[arate parts of the journal name with spaces.

Response: done

Ref. [48]: Comp. Phys. Commun. {\bf 168} (2005) 46; delete "http://dx.doi.org/" from the doi. Refs.

Response: done

***********************************************************************************

Comments Set 11

(1) Throughout the paper (including in the Abstract and in Tables, etc.), to be consistent with the good examples in this paper (e.g. L24 and L133, etc. many places) the spaces before and after the symbol "+" in some expressions of "xxx + jet" and "ttbar + W", etc. should be removed, e.g. in the Abstract (the 7th line, at two places) "in the electron + jets and muon + jets channels," --> "in the electron+jets and muon+jets channels," Other places where also need to be changed by the similar way are L21, L24-25 (at the end of L24 and the beginning of L25), and Table 3's header column (the 2nd and 6th rows under the header row, at two places).

Response: Corrected all places where spaces were found

(2) Throughout the paper (including in Tables and Table captions), the term of "ttbar" has followed by an extra space at many places; this extra space may should be removed, e.g. L32: (at three places) "on the ttbar gammagamma production cross section and the ttbar +jets and ttbar +gammagamma backgrounds," --> "on the ttbargammagamma production cross section and the ttbar+jets and ttbar+gammagamma backgrounds," Other places where also need to be changed by the similar way are L18, L110-111 (at three places), L114, L116-118 (at three places), RESTRICTED L149-150 (at three places), L155 (at two places), L159-161 (at six places), Table 2's caption (the 1st-2nd lines, at three places), and Table 3's header column (the 7th row under the header row).

Response: corrected

(3) Throughout the paper (including the Figure captions and the subscripts), to be consistent in this paper, it should be changed from "t squark" --> "top squark" or "top-squark" (in the subscripts) The places where the changes should be made are L19, and Figs.4 and 5 (in the horizontal axis label and two line labels inside each plot). Page 0, in the Abstract

Response: done

(4) The 2nd-3rd lines, to be consistent with elsewhere (e.g. the "SUSY particles" on L202, etc.) in the text, it may be shortened from "as the lightest supersymmetric particle." --> "as the lightest SUSY particle." Pages 1-5

Response: Addressed

(5) L4, at the end of line, a letter of "a" seems extra and should be removed, i.e. "in which the SUSY partners (sparticlesa)" --> "in which the SUSY partners (sparticles)"

Response: done

(6) L10-11, (a) if two clauses about the "NLSP" and "LSP" would be swapped, the "LSP" may be used in "NLSP" to shorten the explanation of the latter; otherwise (b) since the "LSP" has not been used afterward in whole paper, it eventually can be removed, i.e. "in which the neutralino (~chi01) is the next-to-lowest mass sparticle (NLSP) and the gravitino (~G) is the lowest-mass sparticle (LSP)." --> "in which the gravitino (~G) is the lowest-mass sparticle (LSP) and the neutralino (~chi01) is the next-to-LSP (NLSP)." or "in which the neutralino (~chi01) is the next-to-lowest mass sparticle (NLSP) and the gravitino (~G) is the lowest-mass sparticle."

Response: Addressed

(7) L22, it seems that an article word "a" may should be added, i.e. "bosons decays to a lepton and neutrino." --> "bosons decays to a lepton and a neutrino."

Response: sentence has been reworded so comment is no longer germane

(8) L26, L94 and L143, at three places, the expression of "a b quark (or jet)" is looked quite odd similar as "a b c d xxxx". It may be improved by changing from (a) L26 and L94: (at two places) "a b quark" --> "a bottom quark" (b) L143: "a b jet" --> "a bottom jet"

Response: we do not understand the concern of he commentator.

(9) L48, L56 and L63. As the "pmissT", "eta" and "PF" have already been explained earlier on L12, L46 and L60, respectively, then three places can be shortened from (a) L48: "The missing transverse momentum vector pmissT is defined as ..." --> "The pmissT is defined as ..." (b) L56: "kinematic variables such as pseudorapidity eta or ..." --> "kinematic variables such as eta or ..." (c) "All particle flow candidates are used in" --> "All PF candidates are used in"

Response: done

(10) L53, as the "HLT" has not been used afterward in whole paper, it eventually can be removed, i.e. "The High Level Trigger (HLT) processor farm" --> "The High Level Trigger processor farm"

Response: done

(11) L57, as the numerical value of the angle phi has been implicitly shown on L61, L70, L74 and L78, etc., and an angle can be measured in either the radians or degrees, therefore, the unit of phi may should be specified as "phi, can be found in Ref. [33]." --> "phi (in radians), can be found in Ref. [33]."

Response: done

(12) L61, "kt" is expressed differently from the article title of [37] on L313 (where it is "kT"), I'm not sure whether two expressions should be consistent.

Response: Apparently this can be capitalized or not. I have used lower case which seems to be the style or the paper.

(13) L62, since the "delta eta**2" (the "delta phi**2" is the same) may be looked ambiguous as either "delta((eta)**2)" or "(delta(eta))**2", in order to be less confusing, it's better to add two pairs of bracket in the formula of delta(R), i.e. "delta(R) = sqrt(delta phi**2 + delta eta**2)"--> "delta(R) = sqrt((delta phi)**2 + (delta eta)**2)" similar as all other CMS papers have been expressed.

Response: done

(14) L66, L89, L92-93 (two places) and the Fig.2's caption (the 1st line). To be consistent in this paper, the "pT"s at some places should be changed from (a) L66, L89, and L93: (three places) "pT(italic)" --> "pT(non-italic)" (b) L92: "and isolation PT(non-subscript and italic) values less than" --> "and isolation pT(subscript and non-italic) values less than" (c) Fig.2's caption: (the 1st line, also the font of superscript should be changed) "as a function of pmiss(italic)T(italic) for the combined e and mu" --> "as a function of pmiss(non-italic)T(non-italic) for the combined e and mu"

Response: The comment is a bit garbled. We have tied to make notation for pt consistent but perhaps not as the comment suggests

(15) L129-130, L134-135, L144-145, L147, Table 1's caption and L164. (a) L129-130, to be consistent with elsewhere (e.g. L134, L136 and Fig.1's caption, etc.), the font of "SF" should be changed from (and it can be used at the end of L129 and the beginning of L130 to shorten) "a scale factor (SF(non-italic)) for the Z+jets and Zgamma+jets MC events. This scale factor is measured ..." --> "a scale factor (SF(italic)) for the Z+jets and Zgamma+jets MC events. This SF(italic) is measured ..." (b) Then, other places where can be shortened from "scale factor" --> "SF(italic)" are L134-135 (two places), L144-145 (two places), L147, Table 1's caption (the 3rd line), and L164.

Response: comment has been addressed

(16) L136, Table 1's header row and Fig.1's caption. To be consistent in this paper (e.g. L141 and in the header column of Table 1, etc.), the font of electron "e" should be changed from "italic" --> "non-italic" in the following subscripts: L136, Table 1's header row (and the right column); and Fig.1's caption (the 2nd line, two places; also I have not understood why the "egamma" in the "in egamma for the electron channel in SR1 with the b tag" is placed in a level as the subscript yet.)

Response: We have addressed these comments integrating them with other the comments from others

(17) Fig.1's caption, the last line, two words (i.e. "bottom" and "figure") may be better to be changed from "the bottom of each figure." --> "the lower panel of each plot."

Response: done

(18) Fig.2's caption (A) The 2nd-3rd lines, (i) as there is no any plot labels (a) and (b) now, the position indicators should be changed; (ii) the duplicated word "shown" at the end of sentence should be removed, i.e. "showing (a) CR1 with one misidentified photon, and (b) CR2 with two misidentified photons are shown." --> "showing (left) CR1 with one misidentified photon, and (right) CR2 with two misidentified photons." (B) The 4th and 6th lines, an extra space before the hyphen on the 4th line should be removed; and a space should be added after a sentence on the 6th line, i.e. "an additional distribution -based systematic uncertainty in the signal ... ... used as an additional uncertainty.The ratios of data to background are ..." --> "an additional distribution-based systematic uncertainty in the signal ... ... used as an additional uncertainty. The ratios of data to background are ..." Pages 6-8

Response: Comments addressed.

(19) Tables 2 and 3, in the header columns, the non-leading word should be in the lower case, i.e. (a) Table 2: "Lepton ID/Trigger Photon ID Pileup JES b tagging

---

QCD Scale PDF

---

Control Region Discrepancy SR1/CR1 Ratio SR2/SR1 Ratio

---

SUSY Cross Sections " --> "Lepton ID/trigger Photon ID Pileup JES b tagging

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QCD scale PDF

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Control region discrepancy SR1/CR1 ratio SR2/SR1 ratio

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SUSY cross sections " (b) Table 3: (the 2nd block under the header row) "Total Background" --> "Total background"

Response: Comments addressed

(20) L198, the captions of Table 3 and Fig.4, and L204. Similar as the item (3) above, the spaces in the subscripts seem looked quite odd and it may be better to replace each space in the subscript by a hyphen, i.e. "mtop squark" --> "mtop-squark" The places where the changes should be made are L198, Table 3's caption (the 3rd line); L204, and Fig.4's caption.

Response: We think this will make the subscript somewhat cryptic and therefore have not responded.

(21) L198-199, as the "NLSP" has been already explained earlier on L10, here it may be shortened from "the next to lowest mass supersymmetric particle (NLSP) ..." --> "the NLSP ..."

Response: done

(22) Table 3's caption, the 2nd line, to be consistent with the header column (two rows above the last row), the underscore symbol should be changed to a comma, i.e. "for which (460_175) refers" --> "for which (460,175) refers" Page 9

Response: done

(23) L212-213, per the guidelines of CMS PubComm, some acronyms should be explained at their 1st appearances in the Summary Section, i.e. "for natural gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking in events ... excess in the shape of the pmissT distribution" --> "for natural gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking (GMSB) in events ... excess in the shape of the transverse momentum pmissT distribution"

Response: done

(24) Between L217 and L218, the Acknowledgment Section is missing yet, it (a short version) should be added without needing the Section index number. Pages 9-12, in the References Section,

Response: This will be added

(25) L222-223, in [2] (a) I'm not sure whether a hyphen should be added at the end of article title and whether the "p" should be capital; (b) to be consistent in this Section, (i) all references should have only one page index instead of two, (ii) the year number and the page index should be swapped at the end of L223, and some spaces should be added, i.e. "and Violation of p Invariance”, JETP Lett. 13 (1971) 323–326. [Pisma Zh. Eksp. Teor. Fiz.13,452(1971)]." --> "and Violation of P-Invariance”, JETP Lett. 13 (1971) 323. [Pisma Zh. Eksp. Teor. Fiz. 13 (1971) 452]." Other ones which also need to be changed by the similar way are as (b(i)): [3], [10], [11], [18], [19], [21], [40] and [45]-[48]; and as (b(ii)): [3].

Response: These comments have bee addressed prior to this.

(26) L242, in [10], rather obviously in the author part, "[10] CMS Collaboration Collaboration," --> "[10] CMS Collaboration," Other ones which also need to be changed by the similar way are [34]-[36] and [41].

Response: Comment has been addressed

(27) L250, in [12], to be consistent in this Section, an extra index after the year number should be removed, i.e. "Eur. Phys. J. C 75 (2015), no. 5, 212," --> "Eur. Phys. J. C 75 (2015) 212," Other ones which also need to be changed by the similar way are [13], [32], [40] and [48].

Response: Addressed.

(28) L254, in [13], to be consistent in this Section, a space should be added before the volume index, i.e. (together with the item (27) above for the extra index) "Eur. Phys. J. C76 (2016), no. 1, 6," --> "Eur. Phys. J. C 76 (2016) 6," Other ones which also need to be changed by the similar way are [18]-[20].

Response: Addressed

(29) L256, in [14], (a) in the author part, a comma should be replaced by a word of "and", and the "Collaboration" should be plural; (b) the "pp" in the article title, to be consistent in this Section and this paper, should change the font from "[14] ATLAS, CMS Collaboration, “Combined Measurement of the Higgs Boson Mass in pp(italic)" --> "[14] ATLAS and CMS Collaborations, “Combined Measurement of the Higgs Boson Mass in pp(non-italic)" Another one which also needs to be changed by the similar way as (b) is [39].

Response:the formatting prevents the plural from being added. Other comments is addressed.

(30) L305-306, in [34], to be consistent with the PAS Refs. in all other CMS papers, the document name should be changed, the names of institute and city as well as the month info should be removed, i.e. "Technical Report CMS-PAS-PFT-09-001, CERN, 2009. Geneva, Apr, 2009." --> "CMS Physics Analysis Summary CMS-PAS-PFT-09-001, 2009." Other ones which also need to be changed by the similar way are [35], [36] and [41].

Response: done

(31) L307-308, in [35], three words in the article title may should be in the lower case, i.e. "Commissioning of the Particle-flow Event Reconstruction with the first ..." --> "Commissioning of the particle-flow event reconstruction with the first ..." Other ones which also need to be changed by the similar (or opposite) way are [36] (for the "reconstruction" to start with a capital "R"), and [49] (for the 3rd word of "Program").

Response: done

(32) L329, in [44], to be consistent with other JHEP Refs. in this Section, the volume index should be shortened from "JHEP 0711 (2007) 070," --> "JHEP 11 (2007) 070,"

Response: done

(33) L332, in [45], to be consistent in this Section, the spaces should be added between the words in the journal name, i.e. (together with the item (25(b(i))) above for the page index) "Nucl.Phys.Proc.Suppl. 98 (2001) 96–102," --> "Nucl. Phys. Proc. Suppl. 98 (2001) 96," Other ones which also need to be changed by the similar way are [46] and [47].

Response: done

(34) L340-341, in [48], to be consistent with other CPC Refs. (e.g. [47], etc.) and in all other CMS papers, the journal name can be shortened from (together with the items (25(b(i))) and (27) above for the page index and extra index) "Computer Physics Communications 168 (2005), no. 1, 46 – 70," --> "Comput. Phys. Commun. 168 (2005) 46,"

Response: done

(35) The "year" number should be given for Ref.[49]. If there would be problems to display the year number with the default bib file, it may be fixed by changing from "article" to "unpublished" in the bib file.

Response: Addressed

(36) L346, in [50], a duplicated "CERN" should be removed, i.e. "L. Lyons, eds., CERN. CERN, Geneva, 2000." --> "L. Lyons, eds., CERN, Geneva, 2000."

Response: done but reference will be replaced eventually

**********************************************************************

Comments Set 12

Line 4 : "sparticlesa" --> "sparticles"

Response: done

Line 3 -- 4 : Starting sentence "Of particular interest …", consider to re-structure the sentence.

Response: sentence has been restructured

Line 17-18 : "...pairs of top squarks, with each one decaying predominantl..." --> it's not clear if with "each one" you refer to stop pairs or single stop, please rephrase

Response: the sentence has been divided into two and rephrased.

Line 33, 161 Caption Tab 2: float freely -> freely float

Response: done

Line 40: add a comma after “sections"

Response: done

Line 47: this analysis

Response: done

Line 51 : contructed --> constructed (spelling mistake)

Response: done

Line 68 : "has to be < 5%" --> better to write in words.

Response: done

Line 92 : "PT" --> "p_T” ? B.

Response: done

Line 12 : A very general question, is there any specific reason to use missing transverse momentum and not the missing transverse energy?

Response: strong suggestion from English editor. It is slightly more correct also.

In Section 3 consider to add a description about the electron reconstruction, as its used in the analysis.

Response: We have such a description already.

Line 45: which pseudorapidity range corresponds to the 1% energy resolution of unconverted or late-converting photons?

Response: 1% resolution is achieved for the entire barrel region for unconverted or later converted photons.

Line 46 -- 47 : Its better to justify the reason behind using only the barrel photons in the analysis.

Response: a justification has been added.

Line 48 -- 50 can be transferred to Section 3 that will cover the description of all the object reconstruction in one place ?

Response: Transfer done

Line 51: "constructed using special hardware processors” - it is really needed to say that ?

Response: yes to distinguish the Level 1 trigger from the Level 2 processor farm.

Line 74 -- 75 : "..... have an isolation in a ..." —> consider to define isolation as done in Photons section, as isolation is not a basic variable.

Response: Isolation reworded for electronis

Line 81: what "medium working point" refers to? If you specify it you should maybe give some info

Response: medium working point has been deleted.

Line 82: “CSV" or “CSVM"?

Response: CVSM has been deleted in a rewrite.

Line 92 : ".... and isolation PT values less than ...." --> it is defined?

Response: unclear what is being requested. The criteria for isolation is given in the sentence.

Line 93-95 : How many jets are required ? 4 ( 3Jets + 1 b-Jet) or 3 (2Jets + 1 b-Jet) ? Please clarify it in the text.

Response: done

Line 103 and 104 : "true candidate photon" --> isn't it better to use only candidate photon?

Response: This section has been rewritten

Line 109: we suggest to replace "poorly reconstructed ....objects" with "event types" to avoid repetition.

Response: We do not follow this suggestion since it seems to be less accurate than the original wording

Line 215-217 : which are the previous limit in GMSB model? were they evaluated looking for the same decay or with other type of searches?

Response: In responses to previous comments we have surveyed the field of previous results and could not find any that had our particular topology (askign for photons) employing GMSB as a model.

Caption Tab 1: we suggest ti rephrase the third sentence as: "In the muon+jet channel only the first scale factor is applied”

Response: done

Caption Fig 2: remove "are shown" at the end of the first sentence; estra-space before "-based", 4th line; add a comma after "therefore"

Response: done

Table 2: the dominant rate uncertainty... arise from….

Response: sentence commented on was removed in response to a previous comment.

Fig 2: it would be nice to see the expected distribution for p_T^miss for the GMSB model with one set of mass values

Response: It does not seem to make sense to put a GMBS curve on CR1 or CR2 since these data samples are constructed specifically to minimize the GMSB signal samples (to order of a percent)?

Figures

• Fig 1 (a) pdf

• Fig 1 (b) pdf

• Fig 1 (c) pdf

• Fig 1 (a) without label (a), for presentations pdf

• Fig 1 (b) without label (b), for presentations pdf

• Fig 1 (c) without label (c), for presentations pdf

• Fig 2 CR1 pdf

• Fig 2 CR2 pdf

• Fig 3 SR1 pdf

• Fig 3 SR2 pdf

• Fig 4 observed UL pdf

• Fig 4 expected UL pdf

• Fig 5 pdf