Sbottoms of Natural NMSSM at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper investigates the potential for detecting light sbottoms within the NMSSM framework at the LHC, emphasizing multi-channel analysis strategies to identify their unique signatures and underlying neutralino sector characteristics.

Contribution

It proposes a novel multi-channel analysis approach for discovering light sbottoms in the NMSSM at the LHC, highlighting their distinctive decay signatures and neutralino mixing effects.

Findings

Light sbottoms can be consistent with current LHC constraints.

Multi-channel analysis enhances detection prospects for sbottoms.

Significant multi-lepton final states can indicate sbottom presence and composition.

Abstract

Search for the bottom squarks (sbottoms) at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has recently assumed a heightened focus in the hunt for Supersymmetry (SUSY). The popular framework of the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM) could conceive a naturally light sbottom which could easily be consistent with available constraints from the experiments at the LHC. Phenomenology of such sbottoms could in principle be as striking as that for a light top squark (stop) thanks to a rather nontrivial neutralino sector (with appreciable mixing among the neutral higgsinos and the singlino) that the scenario gives rise to. Nonetheless, finding such sbottoms might require a moderately large amount of data ($\sim 300$ $\text{fb}^{-1}$) at the 13 TeV run of the LHC. A multi-channel analysis establishing a generic depletion of events in the usual $2b$-$jets$ +$\text{\sout{E}}_T$ final state while registering, in conjunction, characteristically significant rates in various multi-lepton final states accompanied by $b$-$jets$ might point not only to the presence of light sbottom(s) but could also shed crucial light on their compositions and the (singlino) nature of the lightest SUSY particle (LSP).