Electroweakinos Hiding in Higgs Searches

TL;DR

Current LHC Higgs searches, especially in WW* and ZZ* channels, can detect or constrain electroweakinos like charginos and neutralinos, providing new limits beyond LEP and highlighting their role as backgrounds.

Contribution

This paper demonstrates that existing Higgs search channels are sensitive to electroweakinos, extending bounds and exploring compressed spectra regions not previously constrained.

Findings

Higgs searches can set limits up to ~200 GeV on electroweakinos.

Electroweakino production can mimic Higgs signals, acting as a background.

Dilepton low missing energy searches are complementary for light or compressed spectra.

Abstract

Direct production of electroweakly charged states may not produce the high energy jets or the significant missing energy required in many new physics searches at the LHC. However, because these states produce leptons, they are still potentially detectable over the sizeable Standard Model backgrounds. We show that current LHC Higgs searches, particularly in the WW* and ZZ* channels, are sensitive to new electroweak states, such as supersymmetric charginos or neutralinos. Indeed, the 1.7 fb^{-1} Higgs searches can provide the strongest limits in certain regions of parameter space, extending the LEP bound up to ~200 GeV in some cases. Additionally, electroweakino production can form an interesting physics background for Higgs searches, especially at low luminosity and statistics. We show that dilepton searches with low missing energy requirements are complementary to existing searches in exploring regions of parameter space where new electroweak states are light or have compressed spectra.