Implications of gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking with vector-like quarks and a ~125 GeV Higgs boson

TL;DR

This paper explores how adding vector-like quarks in gauge-mediated supersymmetry models can naturally produce a 125 GeV Higgs boson, predicts new exotic fermions accessible at the LHC, and discusses their detection prospects.

Contribution

It introduces a model with vector-like quarks in gauge-mediated SUSY breaking to explain the Higgs mass and analyzes the resulting superpartner spectrum and collider signatures.

Findings

Exotic vector-like fermions could be within LHC reach.

The model predicts specific decay modes and couplings of new fermions.

Implications for LHC searches for supersymmetry and exotic particles.

Abstract

We investigate the implications of models that achieve a Standard Model-like Higgs boson of mass near 125 GeV by introducing additional TeV-scale supermultiplets in the vector-like 10+\bar{10} representation of SU(5), within the context of gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking. We study the resulting mass spectrum of superpartners, comparing and contrasting to the usual gauge-mediated and CMSSM scenarios, and discuss implications for LHC supersymmetry searches. This approach implies that exotic vector-like fermions t'_{1,2}, b',and \tau' should be within the reach of the LHC. We discuss the masses, the couplings to electroweak bosons, and the decay branching ratios of the exotic fermions, with and without various unification assumptions for the mass and mixing parameters. We comment on LHC prospects for discovery of the exotic fermion states, both for decays that are prompt and non-prompt on detector-crossing time scales.