A composite gluino at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper explores the decay signatures of composite gluinos at the LHC, showing they resemble SUSY gluinos and challenging the assumption that gluinos are definitive SUSY indicators.

Contribution

It demonstrates that composite gluinos can mimic SUSY gluino signatures, complicating their use as clear evidence for supersymmetry at the LHC.

Findings

Composite gluinos have decay signatures similar to SUSY gluinos.

Distinguishing composite from SUSY gluinos at the LHC is challenging.

Gluinos are not an unambiguous signature of SUSY.

Abstract

We investigate the decay of particles with the quantum numbers of the gluino. Besides SUSY, such particles may be present in models where the Higgs and top are composite. We find that such 'composite' gluinos have decay signatures similar to those of gluinos in 'more minimal' SUSY type models. Though it is in principle possible to distinguish the two scenarios, we find that it will be a challenging task at the LHC. This puts into question the common lore that a gluino is an obvious 'smoking-gun' signature of SUSY.