Searching for light long-lived neutralinos at Super-Kamiokande

TL;DR

This paper uses Super-Kamiokande atmospheric neutrino data to set new constraints on long-lived light neutralinos produced in cosmic-ray air showers, demonstrating neutrino detectors' potential to explore uncharted particle physics parameter space.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to constrain RPV supersymmetric models using neutrino detector data, focusing on long-lived neutralinos from meson decays in cosmic-ray air showers.

Findings

Derived new constraints on RPV couplings for long-lived neutralinos.

Showed neutrino detectors can explore previously unconstrained parameter space.

Highlighted the potential of neutrino experiments in long-lived particle searches.

Abstract

Light neutralinos could be copiously produced from the decays of mesons generated in cosmic-ray air showers. These neutralinos can be long-lived particles in the context of R-parity violating (RPV) supersymmetric models, implying that they could be capable of reaching the surface of the earth and decay within the instrumental volume of large neutrino detectors. In this letter, we use atmospheric neutrino data from the Super-Kamiokande experiment to derive novel constraints for the RPV couplings involved in the production of long-lived light neutralinos from the decays of charged $D$-mesons and kaons. Our results highlight the potential of neutrino detectors to search for long-lived particles, by demonstrating that it is possible to explore regions of parameter space that are not yet constrained by any fixed-target nor collider experiments.