Phenomenological implications of string-motivated supersymmetry breaking
Abstract
TeV scale softly broken supersymmetry (SUSY) is one of the best-motivated candidates for physics beyond the Standard Model (SM). The phenomenology of supersymmetric theories depends in detail on how supersymmetry is broken, since exact supersymmetry is known not to exist in nature. It is thus of crucial importance to build theoretical models of supersymmetry breaking and examine their implications for collider tests of SUSY theories. In this dissertation, we study a recently proposed supersymmetry breaking model known as deflected mirage mediation and compare it to two other benchmark scenarios: mirage mediation and minimal supergravity. In the first half of this dissertation, we compare the collider phenomenology of these two scenarios. The threshold effects from gauge mediation can drastically alter the low energy spectrum from that of pure mirage mediation models, resulting in some cases in a squeezed gaugino spectrum and a gluino that is much lighter than other colored superpartners. We provide several benchmark deflected mirage mediation models and construct model lines as a function of the gauge mediation contributions, and discuss their discovery potential at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In the second half, we switch to another method known as a "landscape" study, where we study the pattern of supersymmetric particle mass hierarchies for the lightest four new states in the MSSM for two models of the soft supersymmetry breaking parameters: (I) minimal supergravity (mSUGRA), and (II) deflected mirage mediation. In deflected mirage mediation, there is a wide variety of phenomenologically preferred models with light charginos, including novel patterns in which the heavy Higgs particles are lighter than the lightest superpartner. The approaches used in both of these studies set the stage for generalized studies of TeV-scale supersymmetry at the LHC.
- Publication:
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Ph.D. Thesis
- Pub Date:
- December 2011
- Bibcode:
- 2011PhDT........71R
- Keywords:
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- Physics, Elementary Particles and High Energy