Flavour Violation in Gauge-Mediated Supersymmetry Breaking Models: Experimental Constraints and Phenomenology at the LHC

We present an extensive analysis of gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking models with minimal and non-minimal flavour violation. We first demonstrate that low-energy, precision electroweak, and cosmological constraints exclude large "collider-friendly" regions of the minimal parameter space. We then discuss various possibilities how flavour violation, although naturally suppressed, may still occur in gauge-mediation models. The introduction of non-minimal flavour violation at the electroweak scale is shown to relax the stringent experimental constraints, so that benchmark points, that are also cosmologically viable, can be defined and their phenomenology, i.e. squark and gaugino production cross sections with flavour violation, at the LHC can be studied.Comment: 29 pages, 1 table, 27 figures. Minor changes. Version published in Nucl. Phys.

Precision predictions for associated gluino-gaugino production at the LHC

Now that the mass limits for gluinos have been pushed to the few-TeV range, they might only be visible at the LHC in associated production with lighter gauginos. We compute the corresponding cross section at next-to-leading logarithmic (NLL) and next-to-leading order (NLO) precision in the QCD coupling constant. The resulting expressions are implemented in the public code RESUMMINO and can be directly used in the corresponding experimental searches.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. Proceedings of the EPS Conference on High-Energy Physics (EPS-HEP 2017), Venice, Ital

Slepton production in polarized hadron collisions

We calculate cross sections and asymmetries for slepton pair production through neutral and charged electroweak currents in polarized hadron collisions for general slepton masses and including mixing of the left- and right-handed interaction eigenstates relevant for third generation sleptons. Our analytical results confirm and extend a previous calculation. Numerically, we show that measurements of the longitudinal single-spin asymmetry at the existing polarized pp collider RHIC and at possible polarization upgrades of the Tevatron or the LHC would allow for a determination of the tau slepton mixing angle and/or the associated supersymmetry breaking parameters Lambda for gauge mediation and A0 for minimal supergravity. Furthermore, the Standard Model background from tau pair production can be clearly distinguished due to the opposite sign of the associated asymmetry.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures; Tevatron/LHC polarization and tau identification discussed, typos correcte

Squark and Gaugino Hadroproduction and Decays in Non-Minimal Flavour Violating Supersymmetry

We present an extensive analysis of squark and gaugino hadroproduction and decays in non-minimal flavour violating supersymmetry. We employ the so-called super-CKM basis to define the possible misalignment of quark and squark rotations, and we use generalized (possibly complex) charges to define the mutual couplings of (s)quarks and gauge bosons/gauginos. The cross sections for all squark-(anti-)squark/gaugino pair and squark-gaugino associated production processes as well as their decay widths are then given in compact analytic form. For four different constrained supersymmetry breaking models with non-minimal flavour violation in the second/third generation squark sector only, we establish the parameter space regions allowed/favoured by low-energy, electroweak precision, and cosmological constraints and display the chirality and flavour decomposition of all up- and down-type squark mass eigenstates. Finally, we compute numerically the dependence of a representative sample of production cross sections at the LHC on the off-diagonal mass matrix elements in the experimentally allowed/favoured ranges.Comment: 35 pages, 29 (partly colour) figures. Some typos corrected, wording of several paragraphs improved, version accepted by Nucl. Phys.

Transverse-Momentum Resummation for Slepton-Pair Production at the LHC

We perform a first precision calculation of the transverse-momentum (q_T) distribution of slepton pair and slepton-sneutrino associated production at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). We implement soft-gluon resummation at the next-to-leading logarithmic (NLL) level and consistently match the obtained result to the pure fixed-order perturbative result at leading order (LO) in the QCD coupling constant, i.e. O(alpha_s). We give numerical predictions for stau_1 stau_1^* and stau_1 sneutrino_tau^* + stau_1^* sneutrino_tau production, also implementing recent parameterizations of non-perturbative effects. The results show a relevant contribution of resummation both in the small and intermediate q_T-regions and little dependence on unphysical scales and non-perturbative contributions.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Precision predictions for direct gaugino and slepton production at the LHC

The search for electroweak superpartners has recently moved to the centre of interest at the LHC. We provide the currently most precise theoretical predictions for these particles, use them to assess the precision of parton shower simulations, and reanalyse public experimental results assuming more general decompositions of gauginos and sleptons.Comment: 5 pages, 2 tables, 5 figures, proceedings of ICHEP 201

Non-Diagonal and Mixed Squark Production at Hadron Colliders

We calculate squared helicity amplitudes for non-diagonal and mixed squark pair production at hadron colliders, taking into account not only loop-induced QCD diagrams, but also previously unconsidered electroweak channels, which turn out to be dominant. Mixing effects are included for both top and bottom squarks. Numerical results are presented for several SUSY benchmark scenarios at both the CERN LHC and the Fermilab Tevatron, including the possibilities of light stops or sbottoms. The latter should be easily observed at the Tevatron in associated production of stops and sbottoms for a large range of stop masses and almost independently of the stop mixing angle. Asymmetry measurements for light stops at the polarized BNL RHIC collider are also briefly discussed.Comment: 22 pages, 11 figure

High-dimensional Z' phenomenology at hadron colliders

We study the phenomenology of a Z'-boson field coupled to hypercharge. The Z' propagator has a non-trivial K\"all\'en-Lehmann spectral density due to the mixing with a higher dimensional inert vector field. As a consequence detection possibilities at hadron colliders are reduced. We determine the range of parameters where this field can be studied at the Tevatron and the LHC through its production cross section via the Drell-Yan mechanism.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures; version accepted by Phys.Rev.

Cornering pseudoscalar-mediated dark matter with the LHC and cosmology

Models in which dark matter particles communicate with the visible sector through a pseudoscalar mediator are well-motivated both from a theoretical and from a phenomenological standpoint. With direct detection bounds being typically subleading in such scenarios, the main constraints stem either from collider searches for dark matter, or from indirect detection experiments. However., LHC searches for the mediator particles themselves can not only compete with — or even supersede — the reach of direct collider dark matter probes, but they can also test scenarios in which traditional monojet searches become irrelevant, especially when the mediator cannot decay on-shell into dark matter particles or its decay is suppressed. In this work we perform a detailed analysis of a pseudoscalar-mediated dark matter simplified model, taking into account a large set of collider constraints and concentrating on the parameter space regions favoured by cos-mological and astrophysical data. We find that mediator masses above 100-200 GeV are essentially excluded by LHC searches in the case of large couplings to the top quark, while forthcoming collider and astrophysical measurements will further constrain the available parameter space