No Arabic abstract
With sufficient data, Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments can constrain the selectron-smuon mass splitting through differences in the di-electron and di-muon edges from supersymmetry (SUSY) cascade decays. We study the sensitivity of the LHC to this mass splitting, which within mSUGRA may be constrained down to O(10^{-4}) for 30 fb^{-1} of integrated luminosity. Over substantial regions of SUSY breaking parameter space the fractional edge splitting can be significantly enhanced over the fractional mass splitting. Within models where the selectron and smuon are constrained to be universal at a high scale, edge splittings up to a few percent may be induced by renormalisation group effects and may be significantly discriminated from zero. The edge splitting provides important information about high-scale SUSY breaking terms and should be included in any fit of LHC data to high-scale models.
We investigate multilepton LHC signals arising from electroweak processes involving sleptons. We consider the framework of general gauge mediated supersymmetry breaking, focusing on models where the low mass region of the superpartner spectrum consists of the three generations of charged sleptons and the nearly massless gravitino. We demonstrate how such models can provide an explanation for the anomalous four lepton events recently observed by the CMS collaboration, while satisfying other existing experimental constraints. The best fit to the CMS data is obtained for a selectron/smuon mass of around 145 GeV and a stau mass of around 90 GeV. These models also give rise to final states with more than four leptons, offering alternative channels in which they can be probed and we estimate the corresponding production rates at the LHC.
Motivated by the absence of any clear signal of physics beyond the Standard Model at the LHC after Run I, we discuss one possible slight hint of new physics and one non-minimal extension of the Standard Model. In the first part we provide a tentative explanation of a small excess of multilepton events, observed by the CMS collaboration, by means of a simplified model of gauge mediated supersymmetry breaking. In the second part we discuss how the standard phenomenology of gauge mediation can be significantly modified if one makes the non-minimal assumption that supersymmetry is broken in more than one hidden sector. Such multiple hidden sector models involve light neutral fermions called pseudo-goldstini and, due to the extra decay steps they induce, where soft photons are emitted, these models give rise to multiphoton plus missing energy signatures. We discuss why the existing LHC searches are poorly sensitive to these model and we propose new searches designed to probe them.
We consider the phenomenology of a class of gauge-mediated supersymmetry (SUSY) breaking (GMSB) models at a e+e- Linear Collider (LC) with c.o.m. energy up to 500 GeV. In particular, we refer to a high-luminosity (L ~ 3 x 10^34 cm^-2 s^-1) machine, and use detailed simulation tools for a proposed detector. Among the GMSB-model building options, we define a simple framework and outline its predictions at the LC, under the assumption that no SUSY signal is detected at LEP or Tevatron. Our focus is on the case where a neutralino (N1) is the next-to-lightest SUSY particle (NLSP), for which we determine the relevant regions of the GMSB parameter space. Many observables are calculated and discussed, including production cross sections, NLSP decay widths, branching ratios and distributions, for dominant and rare channels. We sketch how to extract the messenger and electroweak scale model parameters from a spectrum measured via, e.g. threshold-scanning techniques. Several experimental methods to measure the NLSP mass and lifetime are proposed and simulated in detail. We show that these methods can cover most of the lifetime range allowed by perturbativity requirements and suggested by cosmology in GMSB models. Also, they are relevant for any general low-energy SUSY breaking scenario. Values of c*tau_N1 as short as 10s of microns and as long as 10s of metres can be measured with errors at the level of 10% or better after one year of LC running with high luminosity. We discuss how to determine a narrow range (<~ 5%) for the fundamental SUSY breaking scale sqrt(F), based on the measured m_N1, c*tau_N1. Finally, we suggest how to optimise the LC detector performance for this purpose.
If new physics is found at the LHC (and the ILC) the reconstruction of the underlying theory should not be biased by assumptions about high--scale models. For the mapping of many measurements onto high--dimensional parameter spaces we introduce SFitter with its new weighted Markov chain technique. SFitter constructs an exclusive likelihood map, determines the best--fitting parameter point and produces a ranked list of the most likely parameter points. Using the example of the TeV--scale supersymmetric Lagrangian we show how a high--dimensional likelihood map will generally include degeneracies and strong correlations. SFitter allows us to study such model--parameter spaces employing Bayesian as well as frequentist constructions. We illustrate in detail how it should be possible to analyze high--dimensional new--physics parameter spaces like the TeV--scale MSSM at the LHC. A combination of LHC and ILC measurements might well be able to completely cover highly complex TeV--scale parameter spaces.
We report a study on the measurement of the SUSY breaking scale sqrt(F) in the framework of gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking (GMSB) models at the LHC. The work is focused on the GMSB scenario where a stau is the next-to-lightest SUSY particle (NLSP) and decays into a gravitino with lifetime c*tau_NLSP in the range 0.5 m to 1 km. We study the identification of long-lived sleptons using the momentum and time of flight measurements in the muon chambers of the ATLAS experiment. A realistic evaluation of the statistical and systematic uncertainties on the measurement of the slepton mass and lifetime is performed, based on a detailed simulation of the detector response. Accessible range and precision on sqrt(F) achievable with a counting method are assessed. Many features of our analysis can be extended to the study of different theoretical frameworks with similar signatures at the LHC.