1. Summary of CWR comments

2. Analysis
>-Line 42 and following: how general are the models of gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking addressed
>in this search: I have the impression that given the requirement of the analysis selection, the regions of
>SUSY parameters and of the phase space explored remain relatively small. For example, in lines 125 and
>126, why the M1 and mu parameters are adjusted to produce the neutralino BR to 50%, 49%, 1% to
>gamma-gravitino, Z-gravitino, Higgs-gravitino respectively?
Fortunately no, this is not the case. Although each analysis is geared towards a particular region of
parameter space (or, more specifically, towards a particular manifestation of the GMSB NLSP), there
is a lot of overlap between the SRs. For example, the NLSP BFs chosen for the gamma+b analysis had
to be very carefully chosen to avoid having the sensitivty of the gamma+b analysis to the model
not be eclipsed by that of the diphoton analysis (the diphoton analysis is a very clean analysis
and thus can pay a bit of a price in photonic BF while still maintaining good sensitivity.)

3. >-Paragraph 7.1: For the background to the diphoton analysis the procedure of the validation regions is
>not explicitily used (differently from the other analyses): why?
For the diphoton analysis, VRs are naturally dominated by the QCD background. Other than that the use of the VR is pretty much the same as it is for the other analyses. On the other hand, of the three background componentns, it’s the QCD background whose estimation was the most difficult and potentially imprecise. The data-driven EW background estimate was in good agreement with that expected from the MC (especially given the limited statistics of the EW control sample), and within errors, so was the irreducible background (dominated by the W contribution whose overall contribution was also estimated with a control sample). So validating the QCD model is what is most important in the diphoton analysis.
>-Table 6. QCD is only 3rd in the background contributions. Due to the large QCD b-bbar cross section,
>naively, the final state b->jet b->e nu c with large Etmis from neutrino and an eletron misidentified
>as a gamma,, potentially could generate a large background… What is the crucial cut(s) to reduce this
>background: kinematics, second b veto, photon isolation,…?
[Under consideration; photon+b analysis]

4. >-Line 578 and following : deposition shape to reject pseudo-photons: it would be nice to show the plots
>of the deposition shapes for jets and photon, at least in the auxiliary material. How effective is this
>shape analysis in rejecting fake photons?
[Under consideration; photon+j analysis]
>Line : I can understand that a decay length of 1 mm is indistinguishable from 0 when dealing with
>a photon, but for the photon+lepton channel I would expect that even a 1 mm decay length could cause some
>inefficiency if standard muon (in particular) and electron impact parameter requirements are imposed? It
>could also have some impact on b-tagging, perhaps?
[Under consideration; photon+b analysis]
>Line 258: I don't have much experience with photons, but at first sight, it seems odd that the
>pseudorapidity is slightly more limited for photons than for electrons.
Here, we have just followed the recommendation of the e-gamma combined performance group. As we understand it, the eta coverage of the first layer, with its fine segmentation that is so helpful in rejecting 0s during photon selection, is somewhat restricted relative to that of the full EM calorimeter. Hence the eta range for reconstructing photons is somewhat less than that for electrons.

5. >Line 362: It is not clear how a cut on delta phi_min(jet,gamma) (< 2.0 according to table 3) rejects events
>with "poor jet reconstruction". What does this mean? You are basically saying that the jet and photon should
>not be back-to-back? Are you actually trying to reject events with back-to-back jets where one jet is faking
>a photon? If so, I would not refer to this as poor jet reconstruction, as a fake photon is a problem with
>photon reconstruction, not jet reconstruction.
We see the reviewer’s point here… a fake photon is indeed a problem with the photon, not the jet, reconstruction. So this is really just a question of description, not analysis methodology. We have edited the paper accordingly.
>Table 5: Since the uncertainties are asymmetric, it would be easy to restrict the downward uncertainty
>such that (nominal - downward uncertainty) >= 0, which seems to me like a natural thing to do.
This point is well taken and one that we had missed. We agree with the reviewer that it makes sense to restrict the error so that the error band doesn’t extend below 0 expected background. Although both the statistical and systematic error estimates did respect this for all diphoton SRs, when combined in quadrature, the negative error on the QCD background component for the two EW SRs extended below 0. We believe the right thing to do (which I think is what was being suggested by the reviewer) is simply to truncate the combined error so that the error band extends down to 0 but not below. If the combined error is restricted in this way, the downward error on the total (QCD+EW+IRR) background changes for the two EW signal regions: in one case from 0.76 to 0.75 and in the other from 0.43 to We are currently exploring the effect of this on our derived limits, although we expect it to be negligible.

6. Content
>286 PubComm has some preferred language on b-tagging that should go here
[Under consideration; photon+b analysis]
>-Line 295: can you provide some more detail on the “overlap-removal procedure”. Is it what explained
>in the following lines based on deltaR? What happens in case of jet-jet overlap?
[Under consideration; Jovan is expert]
>Lines : What is the motivation for choosing the ratio 1.7:1? Does it give optimal sensitivity
>in the relevant final state?
This is the BF for which the photon+b analysis is expected to provide the greatest sensitivity relative to the other analyses, especially the diphoton analysis, which is very sensitive when the photonic BF is largest, and the photon+j analysis, which has maintains high sensitivity when the photonic branching fraction is relatively low.

7. >Line 506: I don't understand the comment about "overlapping phase space" which is "subtracted".
[Under consideration; photon+b analysis]
>Line 679: What are these "radiative decays" and how does one identify kinematically that photons come from
>such decays?
[Under consideration; Jovan is expert]
>Table 9: The last column is not explained in the caption. In particular, the interpretation of the
>"uncertainty" is not necessarily obvious. It looks to me like this is what would be "the green band"
>on a limit plot, and that should probably be explained. Also, it seems to me like it would be worth
>it to include also "the yellow band", as this is low statistics and discreteness/non-Gaussian effects
>are clearly present, so that the 2sigma fluctuation is not just twice the 1sigma fluctuation.
We have added mention of the final column to the caption (and reworked the caption somewhat overall). As for the 2 values: here we believe we are following the standard SUSY group convention for what we are quoting. In fact, two of the analyses have not calculated any 2 limits of any sort.
>Line 730: according to Table 9 the observed 95% CL limit for SR_e^{gl} is 14.8 (not 12.8 as quoted in the text)
>Line 734: according to Table 9 they vary between 0.15 and 0.70 fb
[Under consideration; photon+l analysis]

8. >- Some further motivation of these models might be good, other than being
> motivated by the experimental signatures.
>- The subject matter of the phenom section is very complicated (different
> channels, cases of models and sub-cases), and could benefit from further
> clarification, perhaps with subsections or with dot points.
>L This process is not clear: "scaling the *observed* number of events by the jet-misidentification factor"
>Side note on consistency: jet-misidentification vs jet misidentification
>L592: What is the form of this "fit function"?
[This is for the photon+j analysis]

9. Language/Format >- Write out Table, Figure, etc?
We propose to write out “Table” and “Figure” but will abbreviate “Ref.”.
>58 et seq: References in the form [6-14] are nicer to read.
help…
>266 How is the combination statistical? (This is another case where expanding the acronym >doesn't work well in text)
[N.B.: This is about putting together the inner tracker and muon system segments for muons…]
"statistical" changed to "weighted"
>The References are not consistent with how many authors a paper must have before going to "et al"
>(I suggest 5) nor how many authors are listed before the et al (I suggest 1).
We propose to adhere to theses suggestions.

10. >L138-150: There's a mixture of the use of ~W and ~Chi_1^0 for the NLSP.
>In Figure 2 the ~Chi_1^0 is used. Why don't just stick to this also in the text?
>Line 266 vs. 270: Line 266 seems to indicate that only combined muons are used, but then line
> clearly states that also segment-tagged muons are used. Seems inconsistent.
>Line 351: The notation "SR_{e+mu}^{gamma l}" is misleading, and immediately makes me think of a dilepton
>"different flavor" selection.
[Use SR_{e/mu}^{gamma l} ?]
>Table3: Put the footnote as a real footnote, not in the caption

11. >Line 753: I expect that these are the usual green and yellow bands, and would not refer to them as "experimental
>uncertainty ranges", but rather "expected fluctuations under the background hypothesis" or something similar.
>Lines : I don't understand the explanations for the limit behavior in either direction: At the high end,
>I don't understand how a high NLSP mass gives less phase space for production of an energetic b-jet. At the low
>end, I don't understand how the fact that the analysis becomes insensitive to the value of the gluino mass can
>lead to a drastic increase in the gluino mass limit strength. It should intuitively be the other way around.
[This is for the photon+b analysis]
>L : Put QCD validation paragraph after description of the QCD model earlier in this section.
>L514-8: Prefer a visual of the ABCD instead of text (personal preference)
>Table 7: Is it better to quote < 0.01 than 0.00 \pm 0.00 ?
>Table 9: Increase row spacing

12. Figures
>Figure 4 et seq. y-axis label: Events/(100 GeV) --> Events/100 GeV
>Figure 4 et seq. legend: "fakes" should be defined before it is used. (Is it defined anywhere?)
We prefer the existing form, as it seems more clear. We will change "fake" to "misid“, as we have avoided using “fake” in the body of the paper.
>-Line 578 and following : deposition shape to reject pseudo-photons: it would be nice to show the plots
>of the deposition shapes for jets and photon, at least in the auxiliary material.
>Figure 12: Move the text in the plot away from the limit contour. ? Also, the grey area should say either "m(chi) > m(g)" or "g -> chi forbidden".
>Fig. 12: Why is there no yellow band>
>Fig. 13: Why is suddenly a yellow band used for "+/- 1sigma"?
We propose to use yellow for the plots that show +/- 1 sigma only. We propose to use green for +/- 1 sigma and yellow for +\- 2 sigma for plots that show both. We believe this adheres to SUSY group and ATLAS conventions. We are also going to use the same shades of yellow and green throughout.