Large Hadron Collider reach for supersymmetric models with compressed mass spectra

Abstract

Many theoretical and experimental results on the reach of the Large Hadron\nCollider are based on the mSUGRA-inspired scenario with universal soft\nsupersymmetry breaking parameters at the apparent gauge coupling unification\nscale. We study signals for supersymmetric models in which the sparticle mass\nrange is compressed compared to mSUGRA, using cuts like those employed by ATLAS\nfor 2010 data. The acceptance and the cross-section times acceptance are found\nfor several model lines that employ a compression parameter to smoothly\ninterpolate between the mSUGRA case and the extreme case of degenerate gaugino\nmasses at the weak scale. For models with moderate compression, the reach is\nnot much worse, and can even be substantially better, than the mSUGRA case. For\nvery compressed mass spectra, the acceptances are drastically reduced,\nespecially when a more stringent effective mass cut is chosen.\n