Can the LHC rule out the MSSM ?

TL;DR

This paper examines whether the LHC can definitively exclude the MSSM by analyzing the parameter space and the limitations of current detector trigger systems, highlighting potential challenges in discovering or ruling out supersymmetry.

Contribution

It provides a model-independent analysis of the MSSM parameter space, revealing regions that current LHC triggers might miss, thus questioning the conclusiveness of future MSSM exclusions.

Findings

Significant MSSM parameter space may escape standard LHC triggers

Excluding MSSM requires dedicated triggers or Higgs discovery

Current analyses may not fully rule out MSSM with existing data

Abstract

If supersymmetry (SUSY) exists in nature and is a solution to the hierarchy problem then it should be detectable at the TeV energy scale which the large hadron collider (LHC) is now exploring. One of the main goals of the LHC is the discovery or exclusion of the R-parity conserving minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM). So far, the SUSY search results are presented in the context of the constrained MSSM and other specific simplified SUSY models. A model-independent analysis necessarily relies on the trigger-system of the LHC detectors. By using the posterior samples of a 20-parameter MSSM, the phenomenological MSSM, from a fit to indirect collider and cosmological data we find that there is a significant volume in the MSSM parameter space that would escape the standard trigger-systems of the detectors. As such, in the absence of discovery in the current and future LHC runs, it would be difficult if not impossible to exclude the MSSM unless some dedicated and special triggers are commissioned or a Higgs boson with mass as predicted by the supersymmetric models is not found.