  Some of the cleanest signals for new physics in the early runs of the LHC
will involve strongly-produced particles which give rise to multiple leptons by
undergoing cascade decays through weakly-interacting states to stable
particles. Some of the most spectacular final states will involve three or more
leptons, multiple jets and generally missing energy-momentum as well. A triad
of the most interesting models of new physics which induce such signals is
known to consist of (i) supersymmetry with R-parity conservation, (ii) a
universal extra dimension with conservation of KK-parity and (iii) little Higgs
models with conserved T-parity. Similar signals could also arise if the
Standard Model is augmented with a fourth sequential generation of heavy
fermions. We study all these possibilities and show that a judiciously chosen
set of observables, critically involving the number of identifiable jets and
leptons, can collectively provide distinct footprints for each of these models.
In fact, simple pairwise correlation of such observables can enable unambiguous
identification of the underlying model, even with a relatively small data
sample.
