Quirks in supersymmetry with gauge coupling unification

TL;DR

This paper explores supersymmetric models with extra vector-like particles and a new confining gauge interaction, analyzing their effects on particle spectra and collider signatures, especially quirks at the Tevatron and LHC.

Contribution

It introduces models with additional vector-like supermultiplets coupled to a new confining gauge group, examining their phenomenology and collider detection prospects.

Findings

New particles are essentially free for SO(3) due to large confinement length.

Quirk-antiquirk bound states can be produced at colliders and may lose energy before annihilation.

The models maintain gauge coupling unification and address the supersymmetric flavor problem.

Abstract

I investigate the phenomenology of supersymmetric models with extra vector-like supermultiplets that couple to the Standard Model gauge fields and transform as the fundamental representation of a new confining non-Abelian gauge interaction. If perturbative gauge coupling unification is to be maintained, the new group can be SU(2), SU(3), or SO(3). The impact on the sparticle mass spectrum is explored, with particular attention to the gaugino mass dominated limit in which the supersymmetric flavor problem is naturally solved. The new confinement length scale is astronomical for SO(3), so the new particles are essentially free. For the SU(2) and SU(3) cases, the new vector-like fermions are quirks; pair production at colliders yields quirk-antiquirk states bound by stable flux tubes that are microscopic but long compared to the new confinement scale. I study the reach of the Tevatron and LHC for the optimistic case that in a significant fraction of events the quirk-antiquirk bound state will lose most of its energy before annihilating as quirkonium.