Gaugino production in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV

TL;DR

This paper provides updated next-to-leading order QCD predictions with resummation for gaugino pair production at 8 TeV proton-proton collisions, aiding experimental searches for supersymmetry at the LHC.

Contribution

It offers the first comprehensive precision calculations including resummation for gaugino production at 8 TeV, with detailed uncertainties and comparisons to parton shower methods.

Findings

Total cross sections with uncertainties are provided for benchmark points.

Resummation improves the accuracy of invariant-mass and transverse-momentum distributions.

Comparison shows the precision of parton shower matching to resummation methods.

Abstract

Motivated by hints for a light Standard Model-like Higgs boson and a shift in experimental attention towards electroweak supersymmetry particle production at the CERN LHC, we update in this paper our precision predictions at next-to-leading order of perturbative QCD matched to resummation at the next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy for direct gaugino pair production in proton-proton collisions with a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV. Tables of total cross sections are presented together with the corresponding scale and parton density uncertainties for benchmark points adopted recently by the experimental collaborations, and figures are presented for up-to-date model lines attached to them. Since the experimental analyses are currently obtained with parton showers matched to multi-parton matrix elements, we also analyze the precision of this procedure by comparing invariant-mass and transverse-momentum distributions obtained in this way to those obtained with threshold and transverse-momentum resummation.