Singlet Portal to the Hidden Sector

TL;DR

This paper explores how kinetic mixing between gauge singlets in supersymmetric models creates a portal to hidden sectors, leading to distinctive collider signatures, light hidden particles, and implications for dark matter detection.

Contribution

It introduces a novel mechanism where singlet kinetic mixing connects visible and hidden sectors, predicting light hidden particles and unique collider phenomenology.

Findings

Hidden sector acquires a 0.1-100 GeV mass scale.

Supersymmetric cascades produce Higgs bosons in 1-100% of events.

Hidden sector singlets decay visibly with displacement.

Abstract

Ultraviolet physics typically induces a kinetic mixing between gauge singlets which is marginal and hence non-decoupling in the infrared. In singlet extensions of the minimal supersymmetric standard model, e.g. the next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model, this furnishes a well motivated and distinctive portal connecting the visible sector to any hidden sector which contains a singlet chiral superfield. In the presence of singlet kinetic mixing, the hidden sector automatically acquires a light mass scale in the range 0.1 - 100 GeV induced by electroweak symmetry breaking. In theories with R-parity conservation, superparticles produced at the LHC invariably cascade decay into hidden sector particles. Since the hidden sector singlet couples to the visible sector via the Higgs sector, these cascades necessarily produce a Higgs boson in an order 0.01 - 1 fraction of events. Furthermore, supersymmetric cascades typically produce highly boosted, low-mass hidden sector singlets decaying visibly, albeit with displacement, into the heaviest standard model particles which are kinematically accessible. We study experimental constraints on this broad class of theories, as well as the role of singlet kinetic mixing in direct detection of hidden sector dark matter. We also present related theories in which a hidden sector singlet interacts with the visible sector through kinetic mixing with right-handed neutrinos.