2011/03/09 by John A. Conley, Conley, John A., James S. Gainer +7
Physics and Astronomy · #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #Particle Detector Development and Performance #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1103.1697
51 pages, 26 figures
arxiv created 2011/03/09 · openalex publication_date 2011/03/09 · arxiv updated 2011/03/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We investigate the model independent nature of the Supersymmetry search strategies at the 7 TeV LHC. To this end, we study the missing-transverse-energy-based searches developed by the ATLAS Collaboration that were essentially designed for mSUGRA. We simulate the signals for ~71k models in the 19-dimensional parameter space of the pMSSM. These models have been found to satisfy existing experimental and theoretical constraints and provide insight into general features of the MSSM without reference to a particular SUSY breaking scenario or any other assumptions at the GUT scale. Using backgrounds generated by ATLAS, we find that imprecise knowledge of these estimated backgrounds is a limiting factor in the potential discovery of these models and that some channels become systematics-limited at larger luminosities. As this systematic error is varied between 20-100%, roughly half to 90% of this model sample is observable with significance S>5 for 1 fb-1 of integrated luminosity. We then examine the model characteristics for the cases which cannot be discovered and find several contributing factors. We find that a blanket statement that squarks and gluinos are excluded with masses below a specific value cannot be made. We next explore possible modifications to the kinematic cuts in these analyses that may improve the pMSSM model coverage. Lastly, we examine the implications of a null search at the 7 TeV LHC in terms of the degree of fine-tuning that would be present in this model set and for sparticle production at the 500 GeV and 1 TeV Linear Collider.