QCD corrections to stoponium production at hadron colliders

TL;DR

This paper calculates the next-to-leading order QCD corrections to stoponium production at hadron colliders, providing more accurate cross section predictions crucial for potential experimental detection.

Contribution

It presents the first NLO QCD calculation of stoponium production cross section at hadron colliders, including numerical results for the LHC.

Findings

NLO corrections significantly increase the production cross section.

Dependence of cross section on beam energy, mass, and scales analyzed.

Results aid in potential detection of stoponium via diphoton decays.

Abstract

If the lighter top squark has no kinematically allowed two-body decays that conserve flavor, then it will live long enough to form hadronic bound states. The observation of the diphoton decays of stoponium could then provide a uniquely precise measurement of the top squark mass. In this paper, we calculate the cross section for the production of stoponium in a hadron collider at next-to-leading order (NLO) in QCD. We present numerical results for the cross section for production of stoponium at the LHC and study the dependence on beam energy, stoponium mass, and the renormalization and factorization scale. The cross-section is substantially increased by the NLO corrections, counteracting a corresponding decrease found earlier in the NLO diphoton branching ratio.