Daniel Guest

This thesis presents the results of a search for pair-produced scalar charm quarks with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The search uses 20.3 fb^-1 of data collected during the sqrt(s) = 8 TeV 2012 run. Each charm quark decays to neutrilinos and charm quarks, resulting in a final state consisting of two charm jets and missing transverse energy. A novel `charm tagging’ algorithm was developed to separate this signature from backgrounds, and is discussed in detail. As no evidence of physics beyond the standard model is found, the search is used to set exclusions with 95% confidence in the scalar charm vs neutrilino mass plane.