Long-Lived Unstable Superparticles at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential to detect and analyze the decay of long-lived, unstable superparticles (MSSM-LSP) at the LHC, even when their decay lengths exceed the detector size, providing insights into supersymmetry models.

Contribution

It demonstrates the feasibility of observing MSSM-LSP decays at the LHC across a wide range of lifetimes, including those longer than the detector size, and discusses implications for SUSY models.

Findings

Detection of MSSM-LSP decay possible for lifetimes shorter than 0.01-1 ms

Significant number of decays occur inside the detector for certain lifetimes

Implications for testing SUSY models through decay lifetime measurements

Abstract

In various models of supersymmetry (SUSY), the lightest superparticle in the minimal SUSY standard model sector, which we call MSSM-LSP, becomes unstable. Then, we may observe the decay of the MSSM-LSP in the detector at the LHC experiment. We show that the discovery of such a decay process (and the determination of the lifetime of the MSSM-LSP) may be possible at the LHC even if the decay length of the MSSM-LSP is much longer than the size of the detector; sizable number of the MSSM-LSPs decay inside the detector if the lifetime is shorter than 0.01-1 millisec. We also discuss the implications of the study of the MSSM-LSP decay for several well-motivated SUSY models.