Sbottoms as probes to MSSM with nonholomorphic soft interactions

TL;DR

This paper investigates how sbottom particle signals at the LHC can distinguish the NonHolomorphic MSSM from the standard MSSM by analyzing event rates in specific final states, highlighting the role of nonholomorphic soft terms.

Contribution

It introduces a collider phenomenology approach focusing on sbottoms to differentiate NHSSM from MSSM, emphasizing the effects of nonholomorphic soft interactions on event signatures.

Findings

Event rate differences in 2b-jets + missing energy final state can distinguish NHSSM from MSSM.

Nonholomorphic soft terms modify bottom Yukawa coupling effects at the LHC.

Potential impact on stop phenomenology at the LHC is discussed.

Abstract

Presence of nonholomorphic soft SUSY breaking terms is known to be a possibility in the popular setup of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM). It has been shown that such a scenario known as NonHolomorphic Supersymmetric Standard Model (NHSSM) could remain `natural' ( i.e., not fine-tuned) even in the presence of a rather heavy higgsino-like LSP. However, it turns out that distinguishing such a scenario from the MSSM is unlikely to be an easy task, in particular at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In a first study of such a scenario at colliders (LHC), we explore a possible way that focuses on the sbottom phenomenology. This exploits the usual $\tan\beta$-dependence (enhancement) of the bottom Yukawa coupling but reinforced/altered in the presence of non-vanishing nonholomorphic soft trilinear parameter $A_b^{\prime}$. For a given set of masses of the sbottom(s) and the light electroweakinos (LSP, lighter chargino etc.) which are known from experiments, the difference between the two scenarios could manifest itself via event rate in the 2b-jets + ${\, \not \! \! E_T}$ final state, which could be characteristically different from its MSSM expectation. Impact on the phenomenology of the stops at the LHC is also touched upon.