Scalar Leptoquark Pair Production at the CERN LHC: Signal and Backgrounds

We present the results of an analysis for the pair production of scalar leptoquarks at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) with $\sqrt{s}=14$ TeV and ${\cal L}=10$ fb$^{-1}$ which includes the dominant sources of Standard Model background associated to this process: $Z^{*}jj$ and $t {\bar t}$ production. We consider leptoquarks introduced in the framework of a supersymmetric grand unified $E_6$ model. The leptoquark production is found to be dominant in most regions of parameter space, except near the $Z$ pole where the Drell-Yan background is peaked. Otherwise the $t {\bar t}$ process provides the main source of background. We establish the discovery reach of the leptoquarks at 750 GeV (1 TeV) for a branching ratio of $BR(LQ \rightarrow eq)=0.5$ ($BR=1$).