Testing supersymmetry at the LHC through gluon-fusion production of a slepton pair

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential for detecting supersymmetric particles at the LHC via gluon-fusion production mechanisms, focusing on slepton pairs and the influence of Higgs bosons, with cross sections varying based on mass and resonance conditions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of gluon-fusion production of sleptons through quartic couplings and Higgs exchange, highlighting conditions for enhanced cross sections and potential probes of the Higgs sector.

Findings

Gluon-fusion production cross section is at most ~1 fb for direct quartic couplings.

Resonant Higgs exchange can increase cross section to ~10 fb.

Cross sections are sensitive to parameters like A, μ, and tanβ, offering experimental probes.

Abstract

Renormalizable quartic couplings among new particles are typical of supersymmetric models. Their detection could provide a test for supersymmetry, discriminating it from other extensions of the Standard Model. Quartic couplings among squarks and sleptons, together with the SU(3) gauge couplings for squarks, allow a new realization of the gluon-fusion mechanism for pair-production of sleptons at the one-loop level. The corresponding production cross section, however, is at most of ${\cal O}(1) $fb for slepton and squark masses of ${\cal O}(100) $GeV. We then extend our investigation to the gluon-fusion production of sleptons through the exchange of Higgs bosons. The cross section is even smaller, of ${\cal O}(0.1) $fb, if the exchanged Higgs boson is considerably below the slepton-pair threshold, but it is enhanced when it is resonant. It can reach ${\cal O}(10) $fb for the production of sleptons of same-chirality, exceeding these values for $\widetilde{\tau}$'s of opposite-chirality, even when chirality-mixing terms in the squark sector are vanishing. The cross section can be further enhanced if these mixing terms are nonnegligible, providing a potentially interesting probe of the Higgs sector, in particular of parameters such as $A$, $\mu$, and $\tan\beta$.