Rapidity Gap Events for Squark Pair Production at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper investigates the potential to detect rapidity gap events caused by electroweak gaugino exchange in squark pair production at the LHC, using full event simulation to identify distinctive signatures.

Contribution

It presents a detailed simulation-based analysis of rapidity gap signatures in squark pair production, highlighting the detectability of color singlet exchange at the LHC.

Findings

Significant evidence for color singlet exchange at SPS1a point

Rapidity gap events show reduced energy deposition between jets

Third jet probability analysis supports gap detection

Abstract

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). We present 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.