Abstract:
We searched for scalar bottom quarks in 156 pb-1 of p anti-p collisions at s**(1/2) = 1.96 TeV recorded by the CDF II experiment at the Tevatron. Scalar bottom quarks can be produced from gluino decays in R-parity conserving models of supersymmetry when the mass of the gluino exceeds that of the scalar bottom quark. Then, a scalar bottom quark. Then, a scalar bottom quark can decay into a bottom quark and a neutralino. To search for this scenario, we investigated events with large missing transverse energy and at least three jets, two or more of which were identified as containing a secondary vertex from the hadronization of b quarks. We found four candidate events, where 2.6 +/- 0.7 are expected from standard model processes, and placed 95\% confidence level lower limits on gluino and scalar bottom quark masses of up to 280 and 240 GeV/c2, respectively.