Search for direct top squark pair production in events with a single isolated lepton, jets and missing transverse energy at sqrt(s) = 8 TeV

This note presents a search for top squark pair production in events with a single isolated electron or muon, jets, and large missing transverse energy. At least one of the jets is required to be identified as originating from a b-quark and events are required to have large transverse mass. The data sample used corresponds to an integrated luminosity of $9.7$ fb$^{-1}$ of pp collisions, collected in $2012$ by the CMS experiment at the LHC, at a centre-of-mass energy of $8$ TeV. No significant excess in data is observed above the expected standard model backgrounds. The results are interpreted in the context of models of top squark pair production where the top squarks decay either to a top quark and a neutralino or to a bottom quark and a chargino. Depending on the decay mode, the results probe top squarks with masses in the range of $160-430$ GeV.