Revisiting the exclusion limits from direct chargino-neutralino production at the LHC

Abstract

We revisit the existing limits on the gaugino masses in various Supersymmetric (SUSY) scenarios derived from Run-I data of the LHC. These limits obtained from the various final states rely heavily on the simplified assumptions regarding the masses, compositions and decay branching ratios of the gauginos. The most promising exclusion limits on the gaugino masses are obtained from trilepton final states while the second lightest neutralino ($\widetilde \chi_2^0$) decaying into the SM-like Higgs and lightest SUSY particle (LSP) results in the weakest bounds. Our aim is to assess the extent of deviation of these exclusion limits in more realistic scenarios. After a brief discussion on the various decay modes of the $\widetilde \chi_2^0$ and the lightest chargino ($\widetilde \chi^{\pm}_1$), we proceed to validate the ATLAS exclusion limits obtained from trilepton, $l\gamma\gamma$ and $lb\bar b$ final states associated with missing energy. We then consider different combinations of the relevant branching ratios to study their impact on the existing bounds. The results are presented alongside the existing exclusion limits to showcase the extent of the obtained deviation. We also observe that the three-body decay modes of $\widetilde \chi_2^0$ and $\widetilde \chi^{\pm}_1$ via off-shell slepton decays resulting in trilepton final states provide bounds that are far more severe in some parts of the available parameter space than that obtained from the usual two-body decay modes of the aforementioned gauginos.