We analyze scenarios in which some flavour of sneutrino is the next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle (NLSP), assuming that the gravitino is the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) and provides the cold dark matter. Such scenarios do not arise in the constrained supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model (CMSSM) with universal gaugino and scalar masses input at the GUT scale. However, models with non-universal Higgs masses (NUHM) do allow scenarios with a sneutrino NLSP, which are quite generic. We illustrate how such scenarios may arise, analyze the possible metastable sneutrino lifetime, and explore the theoretical, phenomenological, experimental and cosmological constraints on such scenarios. We also discuss the collider signatures of such scenarios, how they may be distinguished from neutralino LSP scenarios, and how different flavours of sneutrino NLSP may be distinguished.
The identity of dark matter has not been solved up to this date, a problem that became the main topic of this conference. There are many theoretical candidates for dark matter particle, including gravitino from supergravity models. For gravitino dark matter scenario, the phenomenology depends much on what the next lightest supersymmetric particle (NLSP) is. We show here that sneutrino can naturally be the NLSP in the Non-Universal Higgs Masses (NUHM) model, and that this scenario is still phenomenologically viable.
For gravitino dark matter with conserved R-parity and mass in the GeV range, very strong constraints from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis exclude the popular NLSP candidates like neutralino and charged sleptons. In this letter we therefore draw attention to the case of a sneutrino NLSP, that is naturally realised in the context of gaugino mediation. We find interesting collider signatures, characterised by soft jets or leptons due to the small sneutrino--stau mass splitting. Moreover, the lightest neutralino can have visible decays into staus, and in some part of the parameter space also into selectr…
We study the scenario where a sneutrino is the next lightest supersymmetric particle (NLSP) and decays into a gravitino and standard model particles. The daughter particles such as neutrinos and quarks cause electro- and hadronic showers and affect big-bang nucleosynthesis. It is found that despite a small branching ratio, four-body processes including quarks in the final state give the most stringent constraint on the sneutrino abundance for gravitino mass of 1 $-$ 100 GeV. Pion production by high energy neutrinos is important when the sneutrinos decay at $\sim$ 1 sec. We also discuss the the…
We present the phenomenology of a supersymmetric model with sneutrino as the next to lightest supersymmetric particle (NLSP) in the gravitino dark matter scenario at the LHC. We focus on the leptonic signatures and study the feasibility of a particular trilepton signature as a possible discovery channel of supersymmetry.
We extend the constrained minimal supersymmetric model (CMSSM) by adding a right-handed neutrino superfield ($ν$CMSSM) which decouples close to the GUT scale. We study the effects of a right-handed neutrino on the low energy spectrum and focus on the predictions for dark matter properties. We pay particular attention to the realization of the light (left-handed) sneutrino which can be the next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle (NLSP) with either the neutralino or gravitino as the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP). Notably, for the case of a neutralino LSP with a sneutrino NLSP, there ar…
We investigate the so-called superWIMP scenario with gravitino as the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) in the context of non-standard cosmology, in particular, brane world cosmology. As a candidate of the next-to-LSP (NLSP), we examine slepton and sneutrino. Brane world cosmological effects dramatically enhance the relic density of the slepton or sneutrino NLSP, so that the NLSP with mass of order 100 GeV can provide the correct abundance of gravitino dark matter through its decay. We find that with an appropriate five dimensional Planck mass, this scenario can be realized consistently w…
We consider supersymmetric model with right-handed (s)neutrinos where the neutrino masses are purely Dirac-type. We discuss cosmology based on such a scenario, paying particular attention to the case that the gravitino is the lightest superparticles (LSP) while the right-handed sneutrino is the next-LSP. It will be shown that the cosmological constraints on the gravitino-LSP scenario (in particular, those from the big-bang nucleosynthesis) are drastically relaxed in such a case. We will also consider the implication of such scenario to the structure formation.
In models with gravitino as the lightest supersymmetric particle(LSP), the next to lightest supersymmetric particle (NLSP) can have a long lifetime and appear stable in collider experiments. We study the leptonic signatures of such a scenario with tau-sneutrino as the NLSP, which is realized in the non-universal Higgs masses scenario. We focus on an interesting trilepton signature with two like-sign taus and an electron or a muon of opposite sign. The neutralinos and charginos are quite heavy in the model considered, and the trilepton signal comes mostly from the slepton-sneutrino production. …
We study a supersymmetric scenario where the lighter tau-sneutrino is the lightest supersymmetric particle, while the lighter stau-state is the next lightest. Such a scenario can be motivated within the framework of minimal supergravity, with just the addition of a right-chiral neutrino superfield. Such a spectrum leads to rather unusual signals of supersymmetry, showing stable tracks of the stau in the muon chambers. We study the event characteristics of the long-lived staus at the LHC and demonstrate that the stau tracks can be distinguished from the muonic ones through proper kinematic cuts…
We analyze the possibility that the lighter stop {\tilde t_1} could be the next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle (NLSP) in models where the gravitino is the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP). We do not find any possibility for a stop NLSP in the constrained MSSM with universal input soft supersymmetry-breaking masses at the GUT scale (CMSSM), but do find small allowed regions in models with non-universal Higgs masses (NUHM). We discuss the cosmological evolution of stop hadrons. Most {\tilde t_1}qq `sbaryons' and the corresponding `antisbaryons' annihilate with conventional antibaryons…
We have considered a supersymmetric scenario in which the minimal supersymmetric standard model is augmented with a right-chiral neutrino superfield for each generation. Such a scenario can have a lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) dominated by the right-chiral sneutrino state and the lighter stau as the next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle (NLSP). This can easily be motivated by assuming a high scale framework of supersymmetry breaking like minimal supergravity (mSUGRA). Due to the extremely small neutrino Yukawa coupling, the decay of the NLSP to the LSP is suppressed and consequentl…
We investigate charged tracks signals of a supersymmetric scenario, where the lighter stop is the next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle (NLSP). It is found that such an NLSP is stable on the scale of the detector at the LHC if one has a right-chiral sneutrino as the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP). After identifying some benchmark points in the parameter space of a supergravity scenario with non-universal scalar masses, we study a few specific classes of signals, namely, stop pair production and gluino pair production followed by each decaying into a stop and a top. It is shown that …
Although the sneutrino is a viable NLSP candidate with gravitino LSP, spectra of this type occupy a part of SUSY parameter space in which collider signatures are poorly studied. In this paper we will extend previous work on this topic to include sneutrino NLSP spectra with non-minimal phenomenology. Generally, these spectra exhibit very leptophilic behavior, which can be easily observed at the LHC. We show that a variety of such spectra can be analysed with similar techniques, leading in each case to very suggestive evidence for complicated decay chains that end in sneutrinos. Amongst the vari…
The sneutrino is a viable candidate for the NLSP in SUSY spectra with gravitino LSP. In this work we study the collider implications of this possibility. In particular, we investigate whether the LHC can distinguish it (at least, in some cases) from alternative spectra, such as those with a neutralino LSP. We show that there exists a complete family of experimentally allowed and theoretically motivated spectra with sneutrino NLSP, which exhibit very distinctive multilepton signals that are difficult to fake within the MSSM. We study these signals in detail, including the techniques necessary t…
A low-scale neutrino seesaw may be probed or even reconstructed at colliders provided that supersymmetry is at the weak scale and the LSP is a sterile sneutrino. Because the neutrino Yukawa couplings are small, the NLSP is typically long-lived and thus a significant fraction of colored or charged NLSPs may stop in the detector material before decaying to the LSP and a charged lepton, gauge boson, or Higgs. For two-body NLSP decays, the energy spectrum of the visible decay product exhibits a monochromatic line for each sterile sneutrino which can be used to extract the sterile sneutrino masses …
The Minimal Supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model provides a solution to the hierarchy problem and leads to the presence of a light Higgs. A Higgs boson with mass above the present experimental bound may only be obtained for relatively heavy third generation squarks, requiring a precise, somewhat unnatural balance between different contributions to the effective Higgs mass parameter. It was recently noticed that somewhat heavier Higgs bosons, which are naturally beyond the LEP bound, may be obtained by enhanced weak SU(2) D-terms. Such contributions appear in models with an enhanced e…
The similarity of the observed mass densities of baryons and cold dark matter may be a sign they have a related origin. The baryon-to-dark matter ratio can be understood in the MSSM with right-handed (RH) neutrinos if CDM is due to a d = 4 flat direction condensate of very weakly coupled RH sneutrino LSPs and the baryon asymmetry is generated by Affleck-Dine leptogenesis along a d = 4 (H_{u}L)^2 flat direction. Observable signatures of the model include CDM and baryon isocurvature perturbations and distinctive long-lived NLSP phenomenology.
We discuss the possible enhancement of the tau lepton events at LHC when the left-handed stau doublet becomes light (which can be even lighter than the right-handed stau). This is illustrated in the constrained supersymmetric seesaw model where the slepton doublet mass is suppressed by the effects of a large neutrino Yukawa coupling. We study a few representative parameter sets in the sneutrino coannihilation regions where the tau sneutrino is NLSP and the stau coannihilation regions where the stau is NLSP both of which yield the thermal neutralino LSP abundance determined by WMAP.
We consider a $U(1)'$ extended supersymmetric model with a right-handed neutrino superfield which can generate light neutrino mass by Type I seesaw mechanism. The lighter superpartner of the right-handed neutrino could be the scalar dark matter. These right-handed sneutrinos can come from the decay of $\tilde{Z'}$, superpartner of the extra gauge boson $Z'$. Left-right handed sneutrino mixings affect their decays further, giving rise to displaced "lepton flavour violating" signatures. A wino-like chargino NLSP (next to lightest supersymmetric particle) creates even more interesting decay topol…
Current data (LHC direct searches, Higgs mass, dark matter-related bounds) severely affect the constrained minimal SUSY standard model (CMSSM) with neutralinos as dark matter candidates. But the evidence for neutrino masses coming from oscillations requires extending the SM with at least right-handed neutrinos with a Dirac mass term. In turn, this implies extending the CMSSM with right-handed sneutrino superpartners, a scenario we dub $\tildeν$CMSSM. These additional states constitute alternative dark matter candidates of the superWIMP type, produced via the decay of the long-lived next-to-lig…
We investigate supergravity models in which the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) is a stable gravitino. We assume that the next-lightest supersymmetric particle (NLSP) freezes out with its thermal relic density before decaying to the gravitino at time t ~ 10^4 s - 10^8 s. In contrast to studies that assume a fixed gravitino relic density, the thermal relic density assumption implies upper, not lower, bounds on superpartner masses, with important implications for particle colliders. We consider slepton, sneutrino, and neutralino NLSPs, and determine what superpartner masses are viable in …
We study the phenomenology of supersymmetric models in which gauge-singlet scalars mix with the MSSM sneutrinos through weak-scale $A$ terms. After reviewing the constraints on mixed-sneutrino dark matter from measurements of $Ω_{CDM}$ and from direct-detection experiments, we explore mixed-sneutrino signatures relevant to the LHC. For a mixed-sneutrino LSP and a right-handed slepton NLSP, decays of the lightest neturalino can produce opposite-sign, same-flavor (OSSF) dileptons with an invariant-mass distribution shifted away from the kinematic endpoint. In different parameter regions, the cha…
We propose and examine a new set of benchmark supersymmetric scenarios, some of which have non-universal Higgs scalar masses (NUHM) and others have gravitino dark matter (GDM). The scalar masses in these models are either considerably larger or smaller than the narrow range allowed for the same gaugino mass m_{1/2} in the constrained MSSM (CMSSM) with universal scalar masses m_0 and neutralino dark matter. The NUHM and GDM models with larger m_0 may have large branching ratios for Higgs and/or $Z$ production in the cascade decays of heavier sparticles, whose detection we discuss. The phenomeno…
We consider the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) extended by introducing three right-handed (s)neutrinos to account for neutrino masses in the oscillation experiments. Assuming that the neutrino masses are purely Dirac-type, the lightest right-handed sneutrino $\tilde ν_R$ can be the lightest superparticle (LSP), which is a good candidate of cold dark matter (CDM) of the universe. We study the possibility of realizing $\tilde ν_R$-CDM, paying a special attention to the production of $\tilde ν_R$ via decay of the next-to-lightest superparticle (NLSP) after its freeze-out time. It is…
We study dark matter for gaugino-mediated supersymmetry breaking and compact dimensions of order the grand unification scale. Higgs fields are bulk fields, and in general their masses differ from those of squarks and sleptons at the unification scale. As a consequence, at different points in parameter space, the gravitino, a neutralino or a scalar lepton can be the lightest (LSP) or next-to-lightest (NLSP) superparticle. We investigate the constraints from primordial nucleosynthesis on the different scenarios. While neutralino and gravitino dark matter with a sneutrino NLSP are consistent for …
We study a subspace of General Gauge Mediation (GGM) models which generalize models of gauge mediation. We find superpartner spectra that are markedly different from those of typical gauge and gaugino mediation scenarios. While typical gauge mediation predictions of either a neutralino or stau next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle (NLSP) are easily reproducible with the GGM parameters, chargino and sneutrino NLSPs are generic for many reasonable choices of GGM parameters.
We review the phenomenology of gravitino dark matter within supergravity framework. Gravitino can be dark matter if it is the lightest supersymmetric particle, which is stable if R-parity is conserved. There are several distinct scenarios depending on what the next to lightest supersymmetric particle (NLSP) is. We discuss the constraints and summarize the phenomenology of neutralino, stau, stop and sneutrino NLSPs.
Different mechanisms operate in various regions of the MSSM parameter space to bring the relic density of the lightest neutralino, neutralino_1, assumed here to be the LSP and thus the Dark Matter (DM) particle, into the range allowed by astrophysics and cosmology. These mechanisms include coannihilation with some nearly-degenerate next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle (NLSP) such as the lighter stau (stau_1), stop (stop_1) or chargino (chargino_1), resonant annihilation via direct-channel heavy Higgs bosons H/A, the light Higgs boson h or the Z boson, and enhanced annihilation via a larger…
We consider a supergravity (SUGRA) scenario, with universal scalar and gaugino masses at high scale, with a right-chiral neutrino superfield included in the spectrum. Such a scenario can have a lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) dominated by the right sneutrino and a stau as the next-to lightest supersymmetric particle (NLSP). Since decays of all particles into the LSP are suppressed by the neutrino Yukawa coupling, the signal of supersymmetry consists in charged tracks of stable particles in the muon chamber. We demonstrate how a neutralino decaying into a tau and the stau-NLSP can be ful…
We propose a supersymmetric scenario in which the small Yukawa couplings for the Dirac neutrino mass term are generated by the spontaneous-breaking of Pecci-Quinn symmetry. In this scenario, a right amount of dark matter relic density can be obtained by either right-handed sneutrino or axino LSP, and a sizable amount of axion dark radiation can be obtained. Interestingly, the decay of right-handed sneutrino NLSP to axino LSP is delayed to around the present epoch, and can leave an observable cosmological background of neutrinos at the energy scale of $\mathcal{O}(10-100) {\rm GeV}$.
We explore the implications of resolving the muon g-2 anomaly in a SU(4)_c x SU(2)_L x SU(2)_R model, where the soft supersymmetry breaking scalar and gaugino masses break the left-right (LR) symmetry. A 2 sigma resolution of the anomaly requires relatively light sleptons, chargino and LSP neutralino. The stau turns out to be the NLSP of mass <~ 400 GeV, and the sleptons from the first two families can be as heavy as about 800 GeV. The chargino is also required to be lighter than about 600 GeV to accommodate the muon g-2 solutions consistent with the dark matter relic density constraint. The d…
We study gaugino-mediated supersymmetry breaking in a six-dimensional SO(10) orbifold GUT model where quarks and leptons are mixtures of brane and bulk fields. The couplings of bulk matter fields to the supersymmetry breaking brane field have to be suppressed in order to avoid large FCNCs. We derive bounds on the soft supersymmetry breaking parameters and calculate the superparticle mass spectrum. If the gravitino is the LSP, the stau_1 or the tau sneutrino turns out to be the NLSP, with characteristic signatures at future colliders and in cosmology.
The primordial inflation dilutes all matter except the quantum fluctuations which we see in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. Therefore the last phases of inflation must be embedded within a beyond the Standard Model (SM) sector where the inflaton can directly excite the SM quarks and leptons. In this paper we consider two inflaton candidates LLe and udd whose decay can naturally excite all the relevant degrees of freedom besides thermalizing the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) during and after reheating. In particular, we present the regions of the parameter space which …
