The LHC Confronts the pMSSM

TL;DR

This paper assesses how current and future LHC searches constrain the pMSSM parameter space, highlighting differences from simplified models and exploring naturalness-focused scenarios with light stops.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of LHC constraints on the pMSSM, including cases with unusual decay topologies and models with low fine-tuning, emphasizing the potential of 14 TeV searches.

Findings

Current LHC data constrains many pMSSM models.

14 TeV LHC will significantly probe natural pMSSM models.

Some models with unusual decays evade current limits.

Abstract

We explore the impact of current (7+8 TeV) and future (14 TeV) LHC searches on the range of viable sparticle spectra within the 19/20 - dimensional phenomenological MSSM (pMSSM). Considering both neutralino and gravitino LSPs, we compare our results with simplified model exclusion limits and describe important cases where the pMSSM results differ significantly from the simplified model descriptions. We also consider models that are poorly constrained by LHC data because of unusual decay topologies and/or displaced decays, and discuss ways to improve the LHC sensitivity in these scenarios. Finally, motivated by naturalness, we examine the sensitivity of current searches to models with light stops and to a specialized set of models with fine-tuning better than 1\%. We show that the 14 TeV LHC will be a very powerful probe of natural pMSSM models.