Implications of gauge kinetic mixing on Z' and slepton production at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper explores how gauge kinetic mixing affects Z' and slepton production in a supersymmetric B-L extended model, significantly altering LHC bounds and opening new detection channels for sleptons at high energies.

Contribution

It demonstrates the importance of gauge kinetic mixing in supersymmetric models, showing its impact on Z' mass bounds and slepton production prospects at the LHC.

Findings

LHC bounds on Z' mass are reduced from 1920 GeV to 1725 GeV due to kinetic mixing.

Sleptons with masses of several hundred GeV can be produced at 14 TeV LHC.

Kinetic mixing enhances slepton discovery potential even with multi-TeV squark and gluino masses.

Abstract

We consider a supersymmetric version of the standard model extended by an additional U(1)_{B-L}. This model can be embedded in an mSUGRA-inspired model where the mass parameters of the scalars and gauginos unify at the scale of grand unification. In this class of models the renormalization group equation evolution of gauge couplings as well as of the soft SUSY-breaking parameters require the proper treatment of gauge kinetic mixing. We first show that this has a profound impact on the phenomenolgy of the Z' and as a consequence the current LHC bounds on its mass are reduced significantly from about 1920 GeV to 1725 GeV. They are even further reduced if the Z' can decay into supersymmetric particles. Secondly, we show that in this way sleptons can be produced at the LHC in the 14 TeV phase with masses of several hundred GeV. In the case of squark and gluino masses in the multi-TeV range, this might become an important discovery channel for sleptons up to 650 GeV (800 GeV) for an integrated luminosity of 100 fb^{-1} (300 fb^{-1}).