Searches for Natural Supersymmetry in Hadronic Final States with Heavy Flavor at ATLAS

This thesis presents the hadronic-channel supersymmetric searches for direct sbottom and gluino-mediated sbottom and stop production performed on 4.71 fb$^{-1}$ of $\sqrt{s}$ = 7 TeV data collected by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. These signatures are characterized by final states with multiple b-tagged jets and missing transverse energy, and the analysis strategy is chosen accordingly. Particular emphasis is placed on the utilization of the simplified models approach in signal characterization, optimization, and interpretation of results. No significant excess is observed resulting in limits set at 95% confidence level. Relative to the previous versions of the analyses, this iteration represents a several-fold increase in sensitivity to the new physics signatures considered. This is largely due to the use of three b-tag signal regions as well as signal regions based on initial state radiation.