Beyond the CMSSM without an accelerator: proton decay and direct dark matter detection

John Ellis; Jason L Evans; Feng Luo; Natsumi Nagata; Keith A Olive; Pearl Sandick

doi:10.1140/epjc/s10052-015-3842-6

Beyond the CMSSM without an accelerator: proton decay and direct dark matter detection

Eur Phys J C Part Fields. 2016:76:8. doi: 10.1140/epjc/s10052-015-3842-6. Epub 2016 Jan 5.

Authors

John Ellis¹, Jason L Evans², Feng Luo³, Natsumi Nagata⁴, Keith A Olive², Pearl Sandick⁵

Affiliations

¹ Theoretical Physics and Cosmology Group, Department of Physics, King's College London, Strand, London, WC2R 2LS UK ; TH Division, Physics Department, CERN, 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland.
² William I. Fine Theoretical Physics Institute, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455 USA.
³ TH Division, Physics Department, CERN, 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland.
⁴ William I. Fine Theoretical Physics Institute, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455 USA ; Kavli IPMU (WPI), UTIAS, University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Chiba 277-8583 Japan.
⁵ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112 USA.

Abstract

We consider two potential non-accelerator signatures of generalizations of the well-studied constrained minimal supersymmetric standard model (CMSSM). In one generalization, the universality constraints on soft supersymmetry-breaking parameters are applied at some input scale [Formula: see text]below the grand unification (GUT) scale [Formula: see text], a scenario referred to as 'sub-GUT'. The other generalization we consider is to retain GUT-scale universality for the squark and slepton masses, but to relax universality for the soft supersymmetry-breaking contributions to the masses of the Higgs doublets. As with other CMSSM-like models, the measured Higgs mass requires supersymmetric particle masses near or beyond the TeV scale. Because of these rather heavy sparticle masses, the embedding of these CMSSM-like models in a minimal SU(5) model of grand unification can yield a proton lifetime consistent with current experimental limits, and may be accessible in existing and future proton decay experiments. Another possible signature of these CMSSM-like models is direct detection of supersymmetric dark matter. The direct dark matter scattering rate is typically below the reach of the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment if [Formula: see text] is close to [Formula: see text], but it may lie within its reach if [Formula: see text] GeV. Likewise, generalizing the CMSSM to allow non-universal supersymmetry-breaking contributions to the Higgs offers extensive possibilities for models within reach of the LZ experiment that have long proton lifetimes.