Light Stop Decays: Implications for LHC Searches

We investigate the flavour-changing neutral current decay of the lightest stop into a charm quark and the lightest neutralino and its four-body decay into the lightest neutralino, a down-type quark and a fermion pair. These are the relevant stop search channels in the low-mass region. The SUSY-QCD corrections to the two-body decay have been calculated for the first time and turn out to be sizeable. In the four-body decay both the contributions from diagrams with flavour-changing neutral current (FCNC) couplings and the mass effects of final state bottom quarks and $\tau$ leptons have been taken into account, which are not available in the literature so far. The resulting branching ratios are investigated in detail. We find that in either of the decay channels the branching ratios can deviate significantly from one in large parts of the allowed parameter range. Taking this into account, the experimental exclusion limits on the stop, which are based on the assumption of branching ratios equal to one, are considerably weakened. This should be taken into account in future searches for light stops at the next run of the LHC, where the probed low stop mass region will be extended

The periodic solutions of the second order nonlinear difference equation

Periodic and asymptotically periodic solutions of the nonlinear equation OZX~ +- a f(xn) = 0, n E N, are studied

On the asymptotic behavior of solutions of linear differential equations

In the paper sufficient conditions for the difference equation $$\Delta x_n=\sum^r_{i=0}a_n^{(i)}x_{n+i}$$ to have a solution which tends to a constant, are given. Applying these conditions, an asymptotic formula for a solution of an $m$-th order equation is presented

On the asymptotically periodic solution of some linear difference equations

summary:For the linear difference equation $$x_{n+1} -a_n x_n = \sum _{i=0}^r a_n^{(i)}x_{n+i}, \;\;\; n \in N$$ sufficient conditions for the existence of an asymptotically periodic solutions are given

Squark Production and Decay matched with Parton Showers at NLO

Extending previous work on the predictions for the production of supersymmetric (SUSY) particles at the LHC, we present the fully differential calculation of the next-to-leading order (NLO) SUSY-QCD corrections to the production of squark and squark-antisquark pairs of the first two generations. The NLO cross sections are combined with the subsequent decay of the final state (anti)squarks into the lightest neutralino and (anti)quark at NLO SUSY-QCD. No assumptions on the squark masses are made, and the various subchannels are taken into account independently. In order to obtain realistic predictions for differential distributions the fixed-order calculations have to be combined with parton showers. Making use of the Powheg method we have implemented our results in the Powheg-Box framework and interfaced the NLO calculation with the parton shower Monte Carlo programs Pythia6 and Herwig++. The code is publicly available and can be downloaded from the Powheg-Box webpage. The impact of the NLO corrections on the differential distributions is studied and parton shower effects are investigated for different benchmark scenarios.Comment: 36 pages, 10 figure

SU(2) Cosmological Solitons

We present a class of numerical solutions to the SU(2) nonlinear $\sigma$-model coupled to the Einstein equations with cosmological constant $\Lambda\geq 0$ in spherical symmetry. These solutions are characterized by the presence of a regular static region which includes a center of symmetry. They are parameterized by a dimensionless ``coupling constant'' $\beta$, the sign of the cosmological constant, and an integer ``excitation number'' $n$. The phenomenology we find is compared to the corresponding solutions found for the Einstein-Yang-Mills (EYM) equations with positive $\Lambda$ (EYM$\Lambda$). If we choose $\Lambda$ positive and fix $n$, we find a family of static spacetimes with a Killing horizon for $0 \leq \beta < \beta_{max}$. As a limiting solution for $\beta = \beta_{max}$ we find a {\em globally} static spacetime with $\Lambda=0$, the lowest excitation being the Einstein static universe. To interpret the physical significance of the Killing horizon in the cosmological context, we apply the concept of a trapping horizon as formulated by Hayward. For small values of $\beta$ an asymptotically de Sitter dynamic region contains the static region within a Killing horizon of cosmological type. For strong coupling the static region contains an ``eternal cosmological black hole''.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figures, Revte

Higher Order Corrections to Supersymmetric Production and Decay Processes

In the first part of this thesis the decay of the light stop into a charm quark and the lightest neutralino is calculated at one-loop level in the Minimal Supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model (MSSM) in the framework of Minimal Flavor Violation (MFV). The second part of this thesis covers the calculation of next-to-leading order (NLO) corrections in the strong coupling constant to the pair production of squarks of the first two generations in the MSSM

Gluino Polarization at the LHC

Gluinos are produced pairwise at the LHC in quark-antiquark and gluon-gluon collisions: $qqbar,gg \to \tilde{g} \tilde{g}$. While the individual polarization of gluinos vanishes in the limit in which the small mass difference between L and R squarks of the first two generations is neglected, non-zero spin-spin correlations are predicted within gluino pairs. If the squark/quark charges in Majorana gluino decays are tagged, the spin correlations have an impact on the energy and angular distributions in reconstructed final states. On the other hand, the gluino polarization in single gluino production in the supersymmetric Compton process $g q \to \tilde{g} \tilde{q}_{R,L}$ is predicted to be non-zero, and the polarization affects the final-state distributions in super-Compton events.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figure