Off-Shell Supersymmetry

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel quantization scheme where supersymmetric particles are only off-shell, making them undetectable directly but still influencing quantum corrections, thus preserving MSSM features while evading current experimental searches.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized quantization method allowing sparticles to be only off-shell, maintaining MSSM's quantum properties while avoiding direct detection.

Findings

Sparticles can only appear off-shell in the proposed scheme.

The gauge hierarchy problem remains solved.

Gauge coupling unification is preserved.

Abstract

Supersymmetry does not dictate the way we should quantize the fields in the supermultiplets, and so we have the freedom to quantize the Standard Model (SM) particles and their superpartners differently. We propose a generalized quantization scheme under which a particle can only appear off-shell, while its contributions to quantum corrections are exactly the same as those in the usual quantum field theory. We apply this quantization scheme solely to the sparticles in the $R$-parity preserving Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM). Thus sparticles can only appear off-shell. They could be light but would completely escape the direct detection at any experiments such as the LHC. However, our theory still retains the same desirable features of the usual MSSM at the quantum level. For instance, the gauge hierarchy problem is solved and the three MSSM gauge couplings are unified in the usual way. Although direct detection of sparticles is impossible, their existence can be revealed by precise measurements of some observables (such as the running QCD coupling) that may receive quantum corrections from them and have sizable deviations from the SM predictions. Also the experimental constraints from the indirect sparticle search are still applicable.