Implications of light charginos for Higgs observables, LHC searches and dark matter

TL;DR

This paper examines how light charginos in the MSSM can influence Higgs decay rates, dark matter, and LHC signals, suggesting they could be detectable with current and future experiments.

Contribution

It explores a scenario where light charginos affect Higgs observables and remain consistent with experimental constraints, highlighting potential signals at the LHC and dark matter detectors.

Findings

Light charginos can explain the Higgs di-photon excess.

Models with light charginos are consistent with dark matter constraints.

Potential signals at LHC-14TeV and XENON1T are identified.

Abstract

A rather high Higgs mass, m_h = 126 GeV, suggests that at least a part of the supersymmetric spectrum of the MSSM may live beyond O(1TeV) and hence inaccessible to the LHC. However, there are theoretical and phenomenological reasons supporting a possibility that charginos and neutralinos remain much closer to the electroweak scale. In this paper, we explore such a scenario in the light of recent Higgs measurements, mainly its di-photon decay rate, where the data might indicate a slight excess over the SM prediction. That excess could be fitted by the contribution of light charginos provided tan(beta) is low to moderate, a possibility that is receiving much attention for other theoretical reasons. We investigate the implications of this scenario for other observables, such as dark matter constraints, electroweak observables and experimental signals at the LHC, like di-lepton, tri-lepton and same-sign dilepton. An important part of the models survive all the constraints and are able to give positive signals at LHC-14TeV and/or XENON1T.