Identification of the origin of monojet signatures at the LHC

Several new physics scenarios can lead to monojet signatures at the LHC. If such events are observed above the Standard Model background it will be important to identify their origin. In this Letter we compare and contrast these signatures as produced in two very different pictures: vector or scalar unparticle production in the scale-invariant/conformal regime and graviton emission in the Arkani-Hamed, Dimopoulos and Dvali extra-dimensional model. We demonstrate that these two scenarios can be distinguished at the LHC for a reasonable range of model parameters through the shape of their respective monojet and/or missing E-T distributions. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.