Flavour violating up-squark decays at LHC

TL;DR

This paper investigates how squark generation mixing in the MSSM can lead to large flavor-violating decays at the LHC, producing distinctive signals that could test supersymmetric quark flavor violation despite experimental constraints.

Contribution

It demonstrates that significant flavor-violating squark decays are possible at the LHC, providing novel signatures for testing supersymmetric quark flavor violation.

Findings

Large branching ratios for up-type squark decays into charm or top quarks plus neutralino.

Potential observation of flavor-violating signals with high rates at the LHC.

Implications for squark searches and MSSM parameter determination.

Abstract

We study the effect of squark generation mixing on squark production and decays at the LHC in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM). We show that the effect can be very large despite the very strong constraints on quark flavour violation (QFV) from experimental data on B mesons. We find that the two lightest up-type squarks ${\tilde u}_{1,2}$ can have large branching ratios for the decays into $c {\tilde\chi_1^0}$ and $t {\tilde\chi_1^0}$ at the same time, leading to QFV signals '$p p \to c \bar t\, (t \bar c)$ + missing-$E_T$ + $X$' with a significant rate. The observation of this remarkable signature would provide a powerful test of supersymmetric QFV at LHC. This could have a significant impact on the search for squarks and the determination of the underlying MSSM parameters.