Gluino Meets Flavored Naturalness

TL;DR

This paper investigates how flavor violation affects LHC constraints on squark and gluino masses, finding that while constraints are strict, models with stop-scharm mixing remain viable and detectable soon.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed recasting of LHC searches considering flavored naturalness with stop-scharm mixing, updating mass bounds in this context.

Findings

Gluino mass constraints are above 1.2 TeV.

Squark masses are constrained to be above 550 GeV.

Models with sizable stop-scharm mixing remain viable.

Abstract

We study constraints from LHC run I on squark and gluino masses in the presence of squark flavor violation. Inspired by the concept of `flavored naturalness', we focus on the impact of a non-zero stop-scharm mixing and mass splitting in the right-handed sector. To this end, we recast four searches of the ATLAS and CMS collaborations, dedicated either to third generation squarks, to gluino and squarks of the first two generations, or to charm-squarks. In the absence of extra structure, the mass of the gluino provides an additional source of fine tuning and is therefore important to consider within models of flavored naturalness that allow for relatively light squark states. When combining the searches, the resulting constraints in the plane of the lightest squark and gluino masses are rather stable with respect to the presence of flavor-violation, and do not allow for gluino masses of less than 1.2 TeV and squarks lighter than about 550 GeV. While these constraints are stringent, interesting models with sizable stop-scharm mixing and a relatively light squark state are still viable and could be observed in the near future.