Baryon number violation in supersymmetry: Neutron-antineutron oscillations as a probe beyond the LHC

TL;DR

This paper reviews baryon number violation in supersymmetry and discusses how upcoming neutron-antineutron oscillation experiments could surpass current collider and flavor physics constraints, probing superpartner masses in the multi-TeV range.

Contribution

It introduces simplified models for neutron-antineutron oscillations in supersymmetry and evaluates the potential of future experiments to extend beyond existing bounds.

Findings

Future neutron-antineutron experiments can probe multi-TeV gluino and squark masses.

Current LHC and flavor constraints are recast in simplified models.

Proposed experiments could significantly improve the sensitivity to baryon number violation.

Abstract

We summarize the current status of baryon number violation in supersymmetry and provide prospects for going beyond the present reach by means of a new search for neutron-antineutron oscillations. The main motivation is the recently proposed neutron-antineutron oscillation experiment at the European Spallation Source in Lund, Sweden, which is projected to be able to improve the current bound on the transition probability in the quasi-free regime by three orders of magnitude. We consider various processes involving superpartners that give rise to neutron-antineutron oscillations and extract the corresponding simplified models, including only the most relevant superpartners and couplings. In terms of these models we recast and determine the exclusion limits from LHC searches as well as from searches for flavor transitions, CP violation and di-nucleon decays. We find that, for certain regions of the parameter space, the proposed neutron-antineutron experiment has a reach that goes beyond all other experiments, as it can probe gluino and squark masses in the multi-TeV range.