A boost for the EW SUSY hunt: monojet-like search for compressed sleptons at LHC14 with 100 fb^-1

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel LHC14 search strategy using monojet-like events with soft leptons to detect compressed sleptons in supersymmetry, extending sensitivity to lower mass ranges and challenging models like auto-concealed SUSY.

Contribution

It introduces a new analysis method targeting compressed SUSY sleptons with initial state radiation, improving detection prospects for near-degenerate mass spectra at the LHC.

Findings

Sensitivity up to 150 GeV for degenerate sleptons.

Detectability of sleptons in auto-concealed SUSY up to 110 GeV.

Potential to surpass LEP2 limits with more data.

Abstract

Current Large Hadron Collider (LHC) analyses are blind to compressed supersymmetry (SUSY) models with sleptons near the lightest super partner (LSP) in mass: $m_{\tilde{l}} - m_{\tilde{\chi}_1^0} \equiv \Delta m \lesssim 60$ GeV. We present a search sensitive to the very compressed range $3~\text{GeV} < \Delta m < 24~\text{GeV}$ using the channel $p p \rightarrow \tilde{l}^+ \tilde{l}^- +\rm{jet} \rightarrow$ $l^+ l^- \tilde{\chi}_1^0 \tilde{\chi}_1^0 +\rm{jet}$ with soft same-flavor leptons and one hard jet from initial state radiation ($p_{\rm T}^j >100$ GeV). The sleptons recoil against the jet boosting them and their decay products, making the leptons detectable and providing substantial missing transverse momentum. We use the kinematic variable $m_{\rm T 2}$ along with a different-flavor control region to reduce the large standard model backgrounds and control systematic uncertainty. We find the analysis should allow LHC14 with $100~\text{fb}^{-1}$ to search for degenerate left-handed selectrons and smuons in the compressed region up to $m_{\tilde{l}_L} \lesssim 150$ GeV. In addition, it should be sensitive to $m_{\tilde{l}_L} \lesssim 110$ GeV for the very challenging case of auto-concealed SUSY, in which left-handed sleptons decay to the Kaluza-Klein tower of a modulino LSP which lives in $d=6$ extra dimensions. In both the compressed spectrum and auto-concealed SUSY scenarios this analysis will need more data to improve on LEP2 limits for right-handed sleptons due to their smaller cross sections.