Light Gluinos Research Articles

Closing the light gluino gap with electron-proton colliders

The future electron-proton collider proposals, LHeC and FCC-he, can deliver $\mathcal{O}$(TeV) center-of-mass energy collisions, higher than most of the proposed lepton accelerators, with $\mathcal{O}$(ab$^{-1}$) luminosity, while maintaining a much cleaner experimental environment as compared to the hadron machines. This unique capability of $e^- p$ colliders can be harnessed in probing BSM scenarios giving final states that look like hadronic noise at $pp$ machines. In the present study, we explore the prospects of detecting such a prompt signal having multiple soft jets at the LHeC. Such a signal can come from the decay of gluino in RPV or Stealth SUSY, where there exists a gap in the current experimental search with $m_{\tilde{g}} \approx 50 - 70$ GeV. We perform a simple analysis to demonstrate that, with simple signal selection cuts, we can close this gap at the LHeC at 95 % confidence level, even in the presence of a reasonable systematic error. More sophisticated signal selection strategies and detailed knowledge of the detector can be used to improve the prospects of signal detection.

Extended gauge mediation in the NMSSM with displaced LHC signals

We analyze models of extended gauge Mediation in the context of the NMSSM, concentrating on supersymmetric spectra with light gluinos, low fine-tuning and decays of the lightest neutralino leading to displaced vertices. While the minimal scenario has rather heavy gluinos as a result of restrictions from the Higgs sector, we propose two new models in which the gluino can be as light as allowed by direct searches at the LHC, with a mass of about 1.7 , mathrm{TeV} and 2.0 , mathrm{TeV}, respectively. Both models have a tuning of a few permille, and lead to an interesting phenomenology due to a light singlet sector. A singlet state at around 98 GeV can account for the LEP excess, while the singlino has a mass of the order of 100 GeV and decays to b-jets and the gravitino, with decay lengths of a few cm.

Searches for Supersymmetry

New and recent results on Supersymmetry searches are shown for the ATLAS and the CMS experiments. Analyses with about 36 fb[Formula: see text] are considered for searches concerning light squarks and gluinos, direct pair production of 3[Formula: see text] generation squarks, electroweak production of charginos, neutralinos, sleptons, R-parity violating scenarios and long-lived particles.

Light and compressed gluinos at the LHC via string theory

In this article, we show that making global fits of string theory model parameters to data is an interesting mechanism for probing, mapping and forecasting connections of the theory to real world physics. We considered a large volume scenario (LVS) with D3-brane matter fields and supersymmetry breaking. A global fit of the parameters to low-energy data shows that the set of LVS models are associated with light gluinos which are quasi-degenerate with the neutralinos and charginos they can promptly decay into, and thus they are possibly hidden to current LHC gluino search strategies.

Implications of the 750 GeV diphoton excess in gaugino mediation

The 750 GeV diphoton excess reported by ATLAS and CMS indicates the presence of several pairs of the vector-like matter multiplets around TeV scale. If that is the case, radiative corrections from the $SU(3)$ gauge interaction significantly change from those of MSSM, and the infrared-free nature of the gauge interaction leads to characteristic SUSY mass spectra: a ratio of a squark mass to the gluino mass, and scalar trilinear couplings are enhanced at the low-energy scale. Consequently, even in gaugino mediation models, the Higgs boson mass of 125 GeV is explained with the fairly light gluino of 2-3 TeV, which can be accessible at the LHC.

METing SUSY on the Z peak

Recently the ATLAS experiment announced a 3 $\sigma$ excess at the Z-peak consisting of 29 pairs of leptons together with two or more jets, $E_T^{\rm miss}> 225$ GeV and $H_T \geq 600$ GeV, to be compared with $10.6 \pm 3.2$ expected lepton pairs in the Standard Model. No excess outside the Z-peak was observed. By trying to explain this signal with SUSY we find that only relatively light gluinos, $m_{\tilde g} \lesssim 1.2$ TeV, together with a heavy neutralino NLSP of $m_{\tilde \chi} \gtrsim 400$ GeV decaying predominantly to Z-boson plus a light gravitino, such that nearly every gluino produces at least one Z-boson in its decay chain, could reproduce the excess. We construct an explicit general gauge mediation model able to reproduce the observed signal overcoming all the experimental limits. Needless to say, more sophisticated models could also reproduce the signal, however, any model would have to exhibit the following features, light gluinos, or heavy particles with a strong production cross-section, producing at least one Z-boson in its decay chain. The implications of our findings for the Run II at LHC with the scaling on the Z peak, as well as for the direct search of gluinos and other SUSY particles, are pointed out.

Conciliating SUSY with the Z-peaked excess

The ATLAS experiment observed an excess at the $3\sigma$ level in the channel of $Z$ boson, jets and high missing transverse momentum in the full 2012 dataset at 8 TeV while searching for SUSY. The question arises whether the abundance and the kinematical features of this excess are compatible with the yet unconstrained supersymmetric realm, respecting at the same time the measured Higgs boson properties and dark matter density. By trying to explain this signal with SUSY we find that only relatively light gluinos together with a heavy neutralino NLSP decaying predominantly to a $Z$ boson plus a light gravitino could reproduce the excess. We construct an explicit general gauge mediation model able to match the observed signal. More sophisticated models could also reproduce the signal, as long as it features light gluinos, or heavy particles with a strong production cross section, producing at least one $Z$ boson in its decay chain. The implications of our findings for the Run II at LHC with the scaling on the $Z$ peak, as well as for the direct search of gluinos and other SUSY particles, are also discussed.

Reduced LHC constraints for higgsino-like heavier electroweakinos

As a sequel to our earlier work on wino-dominated $\tilde \chi_1^{\pm}$ and $\tilde \chi_2^{0}$ (wino models), we focus on the pMSSM models where $\tilde \chi_1^{\pm}$ and $\tilde \chi_{2,3}^{0}$ are either higgsino dominated (higgsino models) or admixtures of significant amount of higgsino and wino components (mixed models), with or without light sleptons. The LHC constraints in the trilepton channel are significantly weaker even in the presence of light sleptons, especially in the higgsino models, compared to those mostly studied by the LHC collaborations with wino-dominated $\tilde \chi_1^{\pm}$ and $\tilde \chi_2^{0}$. The modes $\tilde \chi_{2,3}^{0}\rightarrow h~\tilde\chi_1^{0}$ with large branching ratios (BRs) are more common in the higgsino models and may produce spectacular signal in the LHC Run-II. In a variety of higgsino and mixed models we have delineated the allowed parameter space due to the LHC constraints, the observed Dark Matter (DM) relic density of the universe, which gets contributions from many novel DM producing mechanisms i.e., the annihilation/coannihilation processes that lead to the correct range of relic density, and the precise measurement of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon. In the higgsino models many new DM producing mechanisms, which are not allowed in the wino models, open up. We have also explored the prospects of direct and indirect detection of DM in the context of the LUX and IceCube experiments respectively. In an extended model having only light gluinos in addition to the electroweak sparticles, the gluinos decay into final states with multiple taggable b-jets with very large BRs. As a consequence, the existing ATLAS data in the $0l$ + jets (3b) + $E\!\!\!\!/_T$ channel provide the best limit on $m_{\tilde g}$ ($\approx$ 1.3 TeV). Several novel signatures of higgsino models for LHC Run-II and ILC have been identified.

Chances for SUSY-GUT in the LHC Epoch

The magic couple of SUSY and GUT still appears the most elegant and predictive physics concept beyond the Standard Model. Since up to now LHC found no evidence for supersymmetric particles it becomes of particular relevance to determine an upper bound of the energy scale they have to show up. In particular, we have analyzed a generic SUSY-GUT model assuming one step unification like in SU(5), and adopting naturalness principles, we have obtained general bounds on the mass spectrum of SUSY particles. We claim that if a SUSY gauge coupling unification takes place, the lightest gluino or Higgsino cannot have a mass larger than about 20 TeV. Such a limit is of interest for planning new accelerator machines.

Dirac gauginos in low scale supersymmetry breaking

It has been claimed that Dirac gaugino masses are necessary for realistic models of low-scale supersymmetry breaking, and yet very little attention has been paid to the phenomenology of a light gravitino when gauginos have Dirac masses. We begin to address this deficit by investigating the couplings and phenomenology of the gravitino in the effective Lagrangian approach. We pay particular attention to the phenomenology of the scalar octets, where new decay channels open up. This leads us to propose a new simplified effective scenario including only light gluinos, sgluons and gravitinos, allowing the squarks to be heavy – with the possible exception of the third generation. Finally, we comment on the application of our results to Fake Split Supersymmetry.

3.5 keV x-ray line from decaying gravitino dark matter

Extremely weakly interacting particles like the gravitino may be stable enough on cosmological time scales to constitute a good dark matter candidate even in the presence of R-parity violation. We consider the possibility that the recently identified 3.5 keV x-ray line can be generated in light gravitino decays to neutrinos and photons. We find that this is indeed possible in loop processes induced by trilinear lepton-number-violating couplings. We show that in order to avoid overproduction of gravitinos, the reheating temperature has to be at most around 100 GeV to 1 TeV. Finally we briefly discuss associated LHC phenomenology due to a relatively light gluino and multijet/multilepton events from R-parity violating decays of neutralinos.

The electroweak sector of the pMSSM in the light of LHC - 8 TeV and other data

Using the chargino-neutralino and slepton search results from the LHC in conjunction with the WMAP/PLANCK and $(g-2)_{\mu}$ data, we constrain several generic pMSSM models with decoupled strongly interacting sparticles, heavier Higgs bosons and characterized by different hierarchies among the EW sparticles. We find that some of them are already under pressure and this number increases if bounds from direct detection experiments like LUX are taken into account, keeping in mind the associated uncertainties. The XENON1T experiment is likely to scrutinize the remaining models closely. Analysing models with heavy squarks, a light gluino along with widely different EW sectors, we show that the limits on gluino mass are not likely to be below 1.1 TeV, if a multichannel analysis of the LHC data is performed. Using this light gluino scenario we further illustrate that in future LHC experiments the models with different EW sectors can be distinguished from each other by the relative sizes of the $n$-leptons + $m$-jets + ${\mbox{${E\!\!\!\!/_T}$}}$ signals for different choices of $n$.

Confronting the natural NMSSM with LHC7-8 data

The natural supersymmetry (SUSY) requires that stop, sbottom, and gluino be around one TeV or lighter. By using the direct SUSY search bounds from both ATLAS and CMS Collaborations, we examine the constraints on the natural SUSY in the Next to Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM). We consider two cases of interpretations for the Higgs boson data: (1) the Standard Model (SM) like Higgs boson is the lightest CP-even Higgs boson; (2) the SM like Higgs boson is the second lightest CP-even Higgs boson. We find that the direct SUSY searches at the LHC impose a strong constraint on the light gluino scenarios, and in both cases the gluino can not be lighter than 1.1 TeV with sbottom mass up to 600 GeV and stop mass up to 550 GeV.

Natural MSSM after the LHC 8 TeV run

We investigate the impact of direct LHC SUSY searches on the parameter space of three natural scenarios in the MSSM. In the first case the spectrum consists of light stops, sbottoms, and Higgsino-like neutralinos, while the other particles are assumed to be out of the experimental reach. In the second case we consider an additional light gluino. Finally we study a more complex spectrum comprising also light sleptons, a wino-like chargino, and a bino-like neutralino. We simulate in detail three LHC searches: stop production at ATLAS with 20.7/fb, CMS 11.7/fb inclusive search for squarks and gluinos with the variable \alpha_T, and CMS 9.2/fb electroweak production with 3 leptons in the final state. For each point in our scans we calculate the exclusion likelihood due to the individual searches and to their statistical combination. We calculate the fine-tuning measure of the points allowed by the LHC and the implications for the Higgs mass and other phenomenological observables: Higgs signal rates, the relic density, BR(Bs --> \mu^+\mu^-), BR(B --> Xs \gamma), and the spin-independent neutralino-proton scattering cross section. We find that points with acceptable levels of fine-tuning are for the most part already excluded by the LHC and including the other constraints further reduces the overall naturalness of our scenarios.

More energy, more searches, but the phenomenological MSSM lives on

We further examine the capability of the 7 and 8 TeV LHC to explore the parameter space of the p(henomenological)MSSM with neutralino LSPs. Here we present an updated study employing all of the relevant ATLAS SUSY analyses, as well as all relevant LHC non-MET searches, whose data were publically available as of mid-September 2012. We find that roughly 1/3 of our pMSSM model points are excluded at present with an important role being played by both the heavy flavor and multi-lepton searches, as well as those for heavy stable charged particles. Nonetheless, we find that light gluinos, 1st/2nd generation squarks, and stop/sbottoms (\lsim 400-700 GeV), as well as models with 1% fine-tuning or better, are still viable in the pMSSM. In addition, we see that increased luminosity at 8 TeV is unlikely to significantly improve the reach of the "vanilla" searches. The impact of these null searches on the SUSY sparticle spectrum is discussed in detail and the implications of these results for models with low fine-tuning, a future lepton collider and dark matter searches are examined.

Flavor constraints on scenarios with two or three heavy squark generations

We re-assess constraints from flavor-changing neutral currents in the kaon system on supersymmetric scenarios with a light gluino, two heavy generations of squarks and a lighter third generation. We compute for the first time limits in scenarios with three heavy squark families, taking into account QCD corrections at the next-to-leading order. We compare our limits with those in the case of two heavy families. We use the mass insertion approximation and consider contributions from gluino exchange to constrain the mixing between the first and second squark generation. While it is not possible to perform a general analysis, we assess the relevance of each kind of flavor- and CP-violating parameters. We also provide ready to use magic numbers for the computation of the Wilson coefficients at 2 GeV for these scenarios.

Search for supersymmetry in hadronic final states using M T2 in pp collisions at $ \sqrt{s}=7 $ TeV

Abstract A search for supersymmetry or other new physics resulting in similar final states is presented using a data sample of 4.73 fb−1 of pp collisions collected at $ \sqrt{s}=7 $ TeV with the CMS detector at the LHC. Fully hadronic final states are selected based on the variable M T2, an extension of the transverse mass in events with two invisible particles. Two complementary studies are performed. The first targets the region of parameter space with medium to high squark and gluino masses, in which the signal can be separated from the standard model backgrounds by a tight requirement on M T2. The second is optimized to be sensitive to events with a light gluino and heavy squarks. In this case, the M T2 requirement is relaxed, but a higher jet multiplicity and at least one b-tagged jet are required. No significant excess of events over the standard model expectations is observed. Exclusion limits are derived for the parameter space of the constrained minimal supersymmetric extension of the standard model, as well as on a variety of simplified model spectra.

Yukawa coupling unification inSO(10)with positiveμand a heavier gluino

The $t\mathrm{\text{\ensuremath{-}}}b\mathrm{\text{\ensuremath{-}}}\ensuremath{\tau}$ unification with positive Higgs mass parameter $\ensuremath{\mu}$ in the minimal supersymmetric standard model prefers ``just so'' Higgs splitting and a light gluino $\ensuremath{\lesssim}500\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{GeV}$ which appears to be ruled out by the recent LHC searches. We reanalyze constraints on soft supersymmetry breaking parameters in this scenario, allowing independent splittings among squarks and Higgs doublets at the grand unification scale, and show that it is possible to obtain $t\mathrm{\text{\ensuremath{-}}}b\mathrm{\text{\ensuremath{-}}}\ensuremath{\tau}$ unification and satisfy experimental constraints on gluino mass without raising supersymmetry breaking scale to very high value $\ensuremath{\sim}20\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{TeV}$. We discuss the origin of independent squark and Higgs splittings in realistic $SO(10)$ models. Just so Higgs splitting can be induced without significantly affecting the $t\mathrm{\text{\ensuremath{-}}}b\mathrm{\text{\ensuremath{-}}}\ensuremath{\tau}$ unification in $SO(10)$ models containing Higgs fields transforming as $10+\overline{126}+126+210$. This splitting arises in the presence of nonuniversal boundary conditions from mixing between 10 and other Higgs fields. Similarly, if additional matter fields are introduced then their mixing with the matter multiplet 16 is shown to generate the squark splitting required to raise the gluino mass within the $t\mathrm{\text{\ensuremath{-}}}b\mathrm{\text{\ensuremath{-}}}\ensuremath{\tau}$ unified models with positive $\ensuremath{\mu}$.

A 125 GeV Higgs boson and muong−2in more generic gauge mediation

Recently, the ATLAS and CMS collaborations reported exciting hints of a Standard Model-like Higgs boson with a mass around 125GeV. A Higgs boson this heavy is difficult to realize in conventional models of gauge mediation. Here we revisit the lightest Higgs boson mass in "more generic gauge mediation," where the Higgs doublets mix with the messenger doublets. We show that a Higgs boson mass around 125GeV can be realized in more generic gauge mediation models, even for a relatively light gluino mass ~1TeV. We also show that the muon anomalous magnetic moment can be within 1sigma of the experimental value for these models, even when the Higgs boson is relatively heavy. We also discuss the LHC constraints and the prospects of discovery.

A heavier gluino from t–b–τ Yukawa-unified SUSY

Supersymmetric models with t–b–τ Yukawa coupling unification and unified gaugino masses at the GUT scale—with μ>0—show a mild preference for light gluino masses mg˜≲500 GeV. This range of mg˜ is now essentially ruled out by LHC searches. We show that a heavier gluino with mg˜∼0.5–3 TeV can also be compatible with excellent t–b–τ Yukawa coupling unification in supersymmetric models with non-universal Higgs masses (NUHM2). The gluino in such models is the lightest colored sparticle, while the squark sector displays an inverted mass hierarchy with mq˜∼5–20 TeV. We present some LHC testable benchmark points for which the lightest Higgs boson mass mh≃125 GeV. We also discuss LHC signatures of Yukawa-unified models with heavier gluinos. We expect gluino pair production followed by decay to final states containing four b-jets plus four W-bosons plus missing ET to occur at possibly observable rates at LHC.