Minimal Flavor Violation as an alternative to R-parity

Abstract

A peculiar aspect of the MSSM, the simplest supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model, is that it is usually defined including an ad hoc symmetry, R-parity, whose sole purpose is to forbid rapid proton decay. This symmetry deeply alters the phenomenology of the MSSM, and renders the experimental search strategies quite involved. Besides, the MSSM suffers from a number of flavor puzzles. Generically, the superparticle contributions to Flavor Changing Neutral Currents (FCNC) are too large compared to experiment, both in the quark and lepton sectors. The Minimal Flavor Violation (MFV) hypothesis aims at suppressing these contributions, and when enforced as a symmetry principle, achieves this in a very natural and systematic way. In this talk, it will be shown that imposing MFV is not only able to suppress supersymmetric contributions to FCNC, it also naturally explains the apparent stability of the proton. As a result, R-parity can be avoided altogether, motivating the search for supersymmetry through simpler channels, like for example single stop resonant production, whose strength is predicted by MFV.