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arXiv · 0710.0525

Hunting long-lived gluinos at the Pierre Auger Observatory

Luis A. Anchordoqui·Antonio Delgado·Carlos A. Garcia Canal·Sergio J. Sciutto
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Abstract

Eventual signals of split sypersymmetry in cosmic ray physics are analyzed in detail. The study focusses particularly on quasi-stable colorless R-hadrons originating through confinement of long-lived gluinos (with quarks, anti-quarks, and gluons) produced in pp collisions at astrophysical sources. Because of parton density requirements, the gluino has a momentum which is considerable smaller than the energy of the primary proton, and so production of heavy (mass ~ 500 GeV) R-hadrons requires powerful cosmic ray engines able to accelerate particles up to extreme energies, somewhat above 10^{13.6} GeV. Using a realistic Monte Carlo simulation with the AIRES engine, we study the main characteristics of the air showers triggered when one of these exotic hadrons impinges on a stationary nucleon of the Earth atmosphere. We show that R-hadron air showers present clear differences with respect to those initiated by standard particles. We use this shower characteristics to construct observables which may be used to distinguish long-lived gluinos at the Pierre Auger Observatory.

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Luis A. Anchordoqui, Antonio Delgado, Carlos A. Garcia Canal, Sergio J. Sciutto. 2007-10-02. Hunting long-lived gluinos at the Pierre Auger Observatory. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.77.023009

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