Flavour Structure of R-violating Neutralino Decays at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper investigates how R-parity violating neutralino decays at the LHC can reveal the flavor structure of underlying operators, aiding in understanding supersymmetric flavor models through detailed signal and background analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive method to distinguish and analyze all 45 R-violating operators via neutralino decay signatures at the LHC, considering flavor structures and operator hierarchies.

Findings

Ability to identify dominant R-violating operators from decay signatures

Demonstrates mapping experimental signals to theoretical flavor models

Shows effective discrimination of signals from MSSM backgrounds

Abstract

We study signatures of R-parity violation in the production of supersymmetric particles at the LHC, and the subsequent decay of the lightest neutralino being the end product of a supersymmetric cascade decay. In doing so, we pay particular attention to the possible flavour structure of the operators, and how one may discriminate between different possibilities. A neutralino LSP would couple to all quarks and leptons and a comparative study of its decays provides an optimal channel for the simultaneous study of all 45 R-violating operators. By studying the expected signals from all these operators, we demonstrate the ability to understand whether more than one coupling dominates, and to map the experimental signatures to operator hierarchies that can then be compared against theoretical models of flavour. Detailed comparisons with backgrounds, including those from MSSM cascade decays are made, using the PYTHIA event simulator.