Measuring Slepton Masses and Mixings at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper explores how the LHC can measure slepton masses and mixings in a supersymmetric model with flavor symmetries, potentially revealing insights into new physics and standard model flavor parameters.

Contribution

It demonstrates that supersymmetric events with metastable sleptons can be fully reconstructed to measure masses and mixings at the LHC, providing a new approach to probing supersymmetry.

Findings

Successful reconstruction of slepton masses and mixings.

Metastable charged sleptons lead to distinctive experimental signatures.

Potential to connect supersymmetry measurements with standard model flavor physics.

Abstract

Flavor physics may help us understand theories beyond the standard model. In the context of supersymmetry, if we can measure the masses and mixings of sleptons and squarks, we may learn something about supersymmetry and supersymmetry breaking. Here we consider a hybrid gauge-gravity supersymmetric model in which the observed masses and mixings of the standard model leptons are explained by a U(1) x U(1) flavor symmetry. In the supersymmetric sector, the charged sleptons have reasonably large flavor mixings, and the lightest is metastable. As a result, supersymmetric events are characterized not by missing energy, but by heavy metastable charged particles. Many supersymmetric events are therefore fully reconstructible, and we can reconstruct most of the charged sleptons by working up the long supersymmetric decay chains. We obtain promising results for both masses and mixings, and conclude that, given a favorable model, precise measurements at the LHC may help shed light not only on new physics, but also on the standard model flavor parameters.