Hadronic production of squark-squark pairs: The electroweak contributions

TL;DR

This paper calculates electroweak contributions to squark-squark pair production at the LHC within the MSSM, including tree-level and NLO corrections, revealing significant effects on cross sections.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive calculation of both tree-level and NLO electroweak effects in squark-squark production at the LHC within the MSSM framework.

Findings

Tree-level EW contributions can reach 20% of the total cross section.

NLO EW corrections generally reduce the leading-order predictions by a few percent.

Interference effects depend on flavor and chirality of the produced quarks.

Abstract

We compute the electroweak (EW) contributions to squark--squark pair production processes at the LHC within the framework of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM). Both tree-level EW contributions, of O(alpha_s alpha + alpha^2), and next-to-leading order (NLO) EW corrections, of O(alpha_s^2 alpha), are calculated. Depending on the flavor and chirality of the produced quarks, many interferences between EW-mediated and QCD-mediated diagrams give non-zero contributions at tree-level and NLO. We discuss the computational techniques and present an extensive numerical analysis for inclusive squark--squark production as well as for subsets and single processes. While the tree-level EW contributions to the integrated cross sections can reach the 20% level, the NLO EW corrections typically lower the LO prediction by a few percent.