R-Parity Violation and Light Neutralinos at SHiP and the LHC

TL;DR

This paper evaluates SHiP's potential to detect light neutralinos produced through R-parity violating interactions, comparing its sensitivity to that of the LHC in specific meson decay channels.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of SHiP's sensitivity to LQD operators in RPV SUSY, including decay width formulas and benchmark scenario simulations.

Findings

SHiP can significantly improve detection sensitivity for certain RPV scenarios.

Neutralino production via meson decays is a promising channel for new physics detection.

SHiP's sensitivity surpasses current LHC limits in specific decay topologies.

Abstract

We study the sensitivity of the proposed SHiP experiment to the LQD operator in R-parity violating supersymmetric theories. We focus on single neutralino production via rare meson decays and the observation of downstream neutralino decays into charged mesons inside the SHiP decay chamber. We provide a generic list of effective operators and decay width formulae for any LQD coupling and show the resulting expected SHiP sensitivity for a widespread list of benchmark scenarios via numerical simulations. We compare this sensitivity to expected limits from testing the same decay topology at the LHC with ATLAS.