The exchange of electroweak gauginos in the $t-$ or $u-$channel allows squark pair production at hadron colliders without color exchange between the squarks. This can give rise to events where little or no energy is deposited in the detector between the squark decay products. We discuss the potential for detection of such rapidity gap events at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Our numerical analysis is divided into two parts. First, we evaluate in a simplified framework the rapidity gap signal at the parton level. The second part covers an analysis with full event simulation using PYTHIA as well as Herwig++, but without detector simulation. We analyze the transverse energy deposited between the jets from squark decay, as well as the probability of finding a third jet in between the two hardest jets. For the mSUGRA benchmark point SPS1a we find statistically significant evidence for a color singlet exchange contribution. The systematical differences between current versions of PYTHIA and HERWIG++ are larger than the physical effect from color singlet exchange; however, these systematic differences could be reduced by tuning both Monte Carlo generators on normal QCD di--jet data.
We perform the resummation of soft-gluon emissions for squark and gluino production at next- to-next-to-leading-logarithmic (NNLL) accuracy. We include also the one-loop hard matching coefficients as well as Coulomb corrections to second order, using Mellin-moment methods. We study the characteristics of this resummation in detail for a centre-of-mass (CM) energy of 8 TeV at the LHC, and for squark and gluino masses up to 2.5 TeV. We find significant enhancing effects for all four processes of squark- and gluino-pair production. Scale dependence is generally reduced compared to NLL resummation…
We explore signatures related to squark decays in the framework of non-minimally flavour-violating Supersymmetry. We consider a simplified model where the lightest squark consists of an admixture of charm and top flavour. By recasting the existing LHC searches for top and charm squarks, we show that the limits on squark masses from these analyses are significantly weakened when the top-charm mixing is sizeable. We propose a dedicated search for squarks based on the $tc+{E_{\mathrm{T}}^{\mathrm{miss}}}$ final state which enhances the experimental sensitivity for the case of high mixing, and we …
The assumption that strongly interacting sparticles will decay directly to the LSP plus jets breaks down in situations where those decays are Yukawa suppressed. That occurs when producing the first two generations of squarks and when, at the same time, there are several electroweakinos lighter than those squarks. In this paper we analyze the signal of pair production of squarks that subsequently decay to an intermediate neutralino ($\tildeχ_3^0$) plus jets. The neutralino will then decay to the LSP (mainly higgsino) and a Higgs. We have simulated the events and designed a discovery strategy ba…
A detailed study of top-quark polarizations and $t \bar t$ charge asymmetries, induced by top-squark-pair production at the LHC and the subsequent decays $\tilde t \to t \tilde χ_1^0$, is performed within the effective description of squark interactions, which includes the effective Yukawa couplings and another logarithmic term encoding the supersymmetry breaking. This effective approach is more suitable for its introduction into Monte-Carlo simulations and we make use of its implementation in {\tt MadGraph} in order to investigate the possibilities of the charge asymmetry $A_\text{C}$, measur…
We present the calculation of the electroweak corrections for squark-antisquark pair production at the LHC within the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model. Taking into account all possible chirality and light-flavor configurations, we evaluate the NLO EW corrections, which are of O(a_s^2 a), as well as the subleading tree-level contributions of O(a_s a) and O(a^2). Numerical results are presented for several scans in the SUSY parameter space and relevant differential distributions are investigated. The impact of the electroweak corrections is nonnegligible and strongly depends on the chiralit…
We present a complete next-to-leading order study of top-squark pair production at the LHC, including QCD and EW corrections. The calculation is performed within the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model and numerical results are presented for parameter regions compatible with the observed Higgs boson. We employ the most recent parton distribution functions including QED corrections and we find NLO EW corrections to the inclusive stop-pair production cross section up to $25 - 30\%$ compared to the leading-order prediction. Besides corrections to inclusive cross sections also important kinemati…
An important tool for interpreting LHC searches for new physics are simplified models. They are characterized by a small number of parameters and thus often rely on a simplified description of particle production and decay dynamics. Considering the production of squarks of the first two generations we compare the interpretation of current LHC searches for hadronic jets plus missing energy signatures within simplified models with the interpretation within a complete supersymmetric model. Although we find sizable differences in the signal efficiencies, in particular for large supersymmetric part…
We study the LHC constraints on an $R$-symmetric SUSY model, where the neutrino masses are generated through higher dimensional operators involving the pseudo-Dirac bino, named bi$ν$o. We consider a particle spectrum where the squarks are heavier than the lightest neutralino, which is a pure bi$ν$o. The bi$ν$o is produced through squark decays and it subsequently decays to a combination of jets and leptons, with or without missing energy, via its mixing with the Standard Model neutrinos. We recast the most recent LHC searches for jets+missing energy with $\sqrt{s}=13~$TeV and $\mathcal{L}=36~{…
A feasibility study is presented for the search of the lightest top squark in a compressed scenario, where its mass is approximately equal to the sum of the masses of the top quark and the lightest neutralino. The study is performed in the final state of two b-jets, one lepton, large missing energy, and two high-$E_{\rm T}$ jets with large separation in pseudo-rapidity, in opposite hemispheres, and with large dijet mass. The LHC could discover compressed top squarks with mass up to approximately 340 GeV (390 GeV) with an integrated luminosity of 1000 ifb (3000 ifb).
We present a calculation of the next-to-leading order QCD corrections to weakino+squark production processes at hadron colliders and their implementation in the framework of the POWHEG-BOX, a tool for the matching of fixed-order perturbative calculations with parton-shower programs. Particular care is taken in the subtraction of on-shell resonances in the real-emission corrections that have to be assigned to production processes of a different type. In order to illustrate the capabilities of our code, representative results are shown for selected SUSY parameter points in the pMSSM11. The pertu…
Motivated by the increased precision expected from LHC Run 3, equally accurate theory predictions are mandatory. As supersymmetry mass limits increase, predictions can be improved by threshold resummation. We examine the effects of including next-to-leading logarithms on associated squark-electroweakino production at the LHC and find a significant reduction in the uncertainty of factorisation and renormalisation scale dependence and a modest increase in the total cross section.
