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Howard Baer

Publications and source records attributed to Howard Baer.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources
arXiv2019

Revisiting the SUSY mu problem and its solutions in the LHC era

The supersymmetry preserving mu parameter in SUSY theories is naively expected to be of order the Planck scale while phenomenology requires it to be of order the weak scale. This is the famous SUSY mu problem. Its solution involves two steps: 1. first forbid mu, perhaps via some symmetry, and then 2. re-generate it of order the scale of soft SUSY breaking terms. However, present LHC limits suggest the soft breaking scale m_{soft} lies in the multi-TeV regime whilst naturalness requires mu~ m_{W,Z,h}~ 100 GeV so that a Little Hierarchy (LH) appears with mu << m_{soft}. We review twenty previously devised solutions to the SUSY mu problem and re-evaluate them in light of whether they are apt to support the LH. We organize the twenty solutions according to: 1. solutions from supergravity/superstring constructions, 2. extended MSSM solutions, 3. solutions from an extra local U(1)' and 4. solutions involving Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry and axions. Early solutions would invoke a global Peccei-Quinn symmetry to forbid the mu term while relating the mu solution to solving the strong CP problem via the axion. We discuss the gravity-safety issue pertaining to global symmetries and the movement instead toward local gauge symmetries or R-symmetries, either continuous or discrete. At present, discrete R-symmetries of order M (Z_M^R) which emerge as remnants of Lorentz symmetry of compact dimensions seem favored. Even so, a wide variety of regenerative mechanisms are possible, some of which relate to other issues such as the strong CP problem or the generation of neutrino masses. We also discuss the issue of experimental verification or falsifiability of various solutions to the mu problem. Almost all solutions seem able to accommodate the LH.

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arXiv2019

LHC SUSY and WIMP dark matter searches confront the string theory landscape

The string theory landscape of vacua solutions provides physicists with some understanding as to the magnitude of the cosmological constant. Similar reasoning can be applied to the magnitude of the soft SUSY breaking terms in supersymmetric models of particle physics: there appears to be a statistical draw towards large soft terms which is tempered by the anthropic requirement of the weak scale lying not too far from ~100 GeV. For a mild statistical draw of m_{soft}^n with n=1 (as expected from SUSY breaking due to a single F term) then the light Higgs mass is preferred at ~125 GeV while sparticles are all pulled beyond LHC bounds. We confront a variety of LHC and WIMP dark matter search limits with the statistical expectations from a fertile patch of string theory landscape. The end result is that LHC and WIMP dark matter detectors see exactly that which is expected from the string theory landscape: a Standard Model-like Higgs boson of mass 125 GeV but as yet no sign of sparticles or WIMP dark matter. SUSY from the n=1 landscape is most likely to emerge at LHC in the soft opposite-sign dilepton plus jet plus MET channel. Multi-ton noble liquid WIMP detectors should be able to completely explore the n=1 landscape parameter space.

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arXiv2018

Gravity safe, electroweak natural axionic solution to strong CP and SUSY mu problems

Particle physics models with Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry breaking as a consequence of supersymmetry (SUSY) breaking are attractive in that they solve the strong CP problem with a SUSY DFSZ-like axion, link the SUSY breaking and PQ breaking intermediate mass scales and can resolve the SUSY mu problem with a naturalness-required weak scale mu term whilst soft SUSY breaking terms inhabit the multi-TeV regime as required by LHC sparticle mass limits and the Higgs mass measurement. On the negative ledger, models based on global symmetries suffer a generic gravity spoliation problem. We present a model based on the discrete R-symmetry Z_{24}^R-- which may emerge from compactification of 10-d Lorentzian spacetime in string theory-- where the mu term and dangerous proton decay and R-parity violating operators are either suppressed or forbidden while a gravity-safe PQ symmetry emerges as an accidental approximate global symmetry leading to a solution to the strong CP problem and a weak-scale/natural value for the mu term.

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arXiv2018

LHC luminosity and energy upgrades confront natural supersymmetry models

The electroweak fine-tuning measure Delta(EW) allows for correlated SUSY soft terms as are expected in any ultra-violet complete theory. Requiring no less than 3% electroweak fine-tuning implies upper bounds of about 360~GeV on all higgsinos, while top squarks are lighter than ~3 TeV and gluinos are bounded by ~ 6-9 TeV. We examine the reach for SUSY of the planned high luminosity (HL: 3 ab^{-1} at 14 TeV) and the proposed high energy (HE: 15 ab^{-1} at 27 TeV) upgrades of the LHC via four LHC collider search channels relevant for natural SUSY: 1. gluino pair production followed by gluino decay to third generation (s)quarks, 2. top-squark pair production followed by decay to third generation quarks and light higgsinos, 3. neutral higgsino pair production with QCD jet radiation (resulting in monojet events with soft dileptons), and 4. wino pair production followed by decay to light higgsinos leading to same-sign diboson production. We confront our reach results with upper limits on superpartner masses in four natural SUSY models: natural gravity-mediation via the 1. two- and 2. three-extra-parameter non-universal Higgs models, 3. natural mini-landscape models with generalized mirage mediation and 4. natural anomaly-mediation. We find that while the HL-LHC can probe considerable portions of natural SUSY parameter space in all these models, the HE-LHC will decisively cover the entire natural SUSY parameter space with better than 3% fine-tuning.

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arXiv2018

Is natural higgsino-only dark matter excluded?

The requirement of electroweak naturalness in supersymmetric (SUSY) models of particle physics necessitates light higgsinos not too far from the weak scale characterized by m(weak)~ m(W,Z,h)~100 GeV. On the other hand, LHC Higgs mass measurements and sparticle mass limits point to a SUSY breaking scale in the multi-TeV regime. Under such conditions, the lightest SUSY particle is expected to be a mainly higgsino-like neutralino with non-negligible gaugino components (required by naturalness). The computed thermal WIMP abundance in natural SUSY models is then found to be typically a factor 5-20 below its measured value. To gain concordance with observations, either an additional DM particle (the axion is a well-motivated possibility) must be present or additional non-thermal mechanisms must augment the neutralino abundance. We compare present direct and indirect WIMP detection limits to three natural SUSY models based on gravity-, anomaly- and mirage-mediation. We show that the case of natural higgsino-only dark matter where non-thermal production mechanisms augment its relic density, is essentially excluded by a combination of direct detection constraints from PandaX-II, LUX and Xenon-1t experiments, and by bounds from Fermi-LAT/MAGIC observations of gamma rays from dwarf spheroidal galaxies.

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arXiv2018

Higgs and superparticle mass predictions from the string theory landscape

Predictions for the scale of SUSY breaking from the string landscape go back at least a decade to the work of Denef and Douglas on the statistics of flux vacua. The assumption that an assortment of SUSY breaking F and D terms are present in the hidden sector, and their values are uniformly distributed in the landscape of D=4, N=1 effective supergravity models, leads to the expectation that the landscape pulls towards large values of soft terms favored by a power law behavior P(m(soft))~ m(soft)^n. On the other hand, similar to Weinberg's prediction of the cosmological constant, one can assume an anthropic selection of weak scales not too far from the measured value characterized by m(W,Z,h)~ 100 GeV. Working within a fertile patch of gravity-mediated low energy effective theories where the superpotential mu term is << m(3/2), as occurs in models such as radiative breaking of Peccei-Quinn symmetry, this biases statistical distributions on the landscape by a cutoff on the parameter Delta(EW), which measures fine-tuning in the m(Z)-mu mass relation. The combined effect of statistical and anthropic pulls turns out to favor low energy phenomenology that is more or less agnostic to UV physics. While a uniform selection n=0 of soft terms produces too low a value for m(h), taking n=1 or 2 produce most probabilistically m(h)~125 GeV for negative trilinear terms. For n>=1, there is a pull towards split generations with m(squarks,sleptons)(1,2)~10-30 TeV whilst m(t1)~ 1-2 TeV. The most probable gluino mass comes in at ~ 3-4 TeV--apparently beyond the reach of HL-LHC (although the required quasi-degenerate higgsinos should still be within reach). We comment on consequences for SUSY collider and dark matter searches.

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arXiv2018

Anomaly mediated SUSY breaking model retrofitted for naturalness

Anomaly-mediated supersymmetry breaking (AMSB) models seem to have become increasingly implausible due to 1. difficulty in generating a Higgs mass m(h)~125 GeV, 2. typically unnatural superparticle spectra characterized by a large superpotential mu term and 3. the possibility of a wino-like lightest SUSY particle (LSP) as dark matter now seems to be excluded. In the present paper we propose some minor modifications to the paradigm model which solve these three issues. Instead of adding a universal bulk scalar mass to avoid tachyonic sleptons, we add distinct Higgs and matter scalar soft masses which then allow for light higgsinos. To gain accord with the measured Higgs mass, we also include a bulk trilinear soft term. The ensuing natural generalized AMSB (nAMSB) model then has a set of light higgsinos with mass nearby the weak scale m(W,Z,h)~100 GeV as required by naturalness while the winos populate the several hundred GeV range and gluinos and squarks occupy the multi-TeV range. For LHC searches, the wino pair production followed by decay to same-sign diboson signature channel offers excellent prospects for discovery at high luminosity LHC along with higgsino pair production leading to soft dileptons plus jet(s)+MET. A linear e^+e^- collider operating above higgsino pair production threshold should be able to distinguish the AMSB gaugino spectra from unified or mirage unified scenarios. Dark matter is expected to occur as a higgsino-like WIMP plus axion admixture.

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arXiv2017

Aspects of the same-sign diboson signature from wino pair production with light higgsinos at the high luminosity LHC

Naturalness arguments applied to simple supersymmetric (SUSY) theories require a set of light higgsinos with mass $\sim |μ|$ not too far from $m_h$. These models have an inverted electroweakino spectrum with $|μ| \ll M_2$ which leads to a rather clean, hadronically quiet, same-sign diboson (SSdB) signature at hadron colliders arising from neutral-plus-charged wino pair production. We improve and expand our earlier studies of this signature for discovering SUSY in natural SUSY models by (i) including backgrounds which were not previously considered and which turn out to be significant, (ii) devising more efficient cuts to successfully contend with these larger backgrounds and determining the discovery reach and exclusion ranges for winos with these cuts, emphasizing projections for the updated integrated luminosity target for HL-LHC of 3 ab$^{-1}$, and (iii) emphasizing the utility of this channel for natural models without gaugino mass unification. We display the kinematic characteristics of the relatively jet-free same sign dilepton+$\not\!\!\!{E_T}$ events (from leptonic decays of both $W$s) and find that these are only weakly sensitive to the parent wino mass. We also examine the charge asymmetry in these events and show that its measurement can be used to check the consistency of the wino origin of the signal. Finally, we show that -- because the wino branching fractions in natural SUSY are essentially independent of details of the underlying model -- a determination of the rate for clean, same-sign dilepton events yields a better than 10% determination of the wino mass over the entire mass range where experiments at the HL-LHC can discover the wino signal.

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arXiv2017

What hadron collider is required to discover or falsify natural supersymmetry?

Weak scale supersymmetry (SUSY) remains a compelling extension of the Standard Model because it stabilizes the quantum corrections to the Higgs and W, Z boson masses. In natural SUSY models these corrections are, by definition, never much larger than the corresponding masses. Natural SUSY models all have an upper limit on the gluino mass, too high to lead to observable signals even at the high luminosity LHC. However, in models with gaugino mass unification, the wino is sufficiently light that supersymmetry discovery is possible in other channels over the entire natural SUSY parameter space with no worse than 3% fine-tuning. Here, we examine the SUSY reach in more general models with and without gaugino mass unification (specifically, natural generalized mirage mediation), and show that the high energy LHC (HE-LHC), a pp collider with \sqrt{s}=33 TeV, will be able to detect the SUSY signal over the entire allowed mass range. Thus, HE-LHC would either discover or conclusively falsify natural SUSY with better than 3% fine-tuning using a conservative measure that allows for correlations among the model parameters.

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arXiv2017

Naturalness and light Higgsinos: why ILC is the right machine for SUSY discovery

Radiatively-driven natural supersymmetry, a theoretically and experimentally well-motivated framework, centers around the predicted existence of four light, nearly mass-degenerate Higgsinos with mass $\sim 100-200$ GeV (not too far above $m_Z$). The small mass splittings amongst the higgsinos, typically 4-20 GeV, results in very little visible energy arising from decays of the heavier higgsinos. Given that other SUSY particles are considerably heavy, this makes detection challenging at hadron colliders. On the other hand, the clean environment of an electron-positron collider with $\sqrt{s}>2m_{higgsino}$ would enable a decisive search of these required higgsinos, and thus either the discovery or exclusion of natural SUSY. We present a detailed simulation study of precision measurements of higgsino masses and production cross sections at $\sqrt{s}$ = 500 GeV of the proposed International Linear Collider currently under consideration for construction in Japan. The study is based on a Geant4 simulation of the International Large Detector concept. We examine several benchmark points just beyond the HL-LHC reach, with four light higgsinos directly accessible by the ILC, and the mass differences between the lightest SUSY particle and the heavier states ranging from about 4 to 20 GeV. It can be shown that their masses and production cross sections can be precisely measured to approximately 1\% precision or better. These precise measurements allow for extracting the underlying weak scale SUSY parameters, giving predictions for the masses of heavier SUSY states. These provide motivation for future high-energy colliders. Additionally, dark matter properties may be derived. Evolution of the measured gaugino masses to high energies should allow testing the hypothesis of gaugino mass unification.

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arXiv2017

The Reach of the High-Energy LHC for Gluinos and Top Squarks in SUSY Models with Light Higgsinos

We examine the top squark (stop) and gluino reach of the proposed 33 TeV energy upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC33) in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) with light higgsinos and relatively heavy electroweak gauginos. In our analysis, we assume that stops decay to higgsinos via ${\tilde t}_1 \to t {\tilde{Z}}_1$, $\tilde{t}_1 \to t\tilde{Z}_2$ and $\tilde{t}$$_1 \to b\tilde{W}_1$ with branching fractions in the ratio 1:1:2 (expected if the decay occurs dominantly via the superpotential Yukawa coupling) while gluinos decay via $\tilde{g}\to t\tilde{t}_1$ or via three-body decays to third generation quarks plus higgsinos. These decay patterns are motivated by models of natural supersymmetry where higgsinos are expected to be close in mass to $m_Z$, but gluinos may be as heavy as $5 - 6$ TeV and stops may have masses up to $\sim 3 $ TeV. We devise cuts to optimize the signals from stop and gluino pair production at LHC33. We find that experiments at LHC33 should be able to discover stops with $> 5σ$ significance if $m_{\tilde{t}_1} < 2.3 \ (2.8) \ [3.2]$ TeV for an integrated luminosity of 0.3 (1)[3] ab$^{-1}$. The corresponding reach for gluinos extends to 5 (5.5) [6] TeV. These results imply that experiments at LHC33 should be able to discover at least one of the stop or gluino pair signals even with an integrated luminosity of 0.3 ab$^{-1}$ for natural SUSY models with no worse than 3% electroweak fine-tuning, and quite likely both gluinos and stops for an integrated luminosity of 3 ab$^{-1}$.

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arXiv2017

Superparticle phenomenology from the natural mini-landscape

The methodology of the heterotic mini-landscape attempts to zero in on phenomenologically viable corners of the string landscape where the effective low energy theory is the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model with localized grand unification. The gaugino mass pattern is that of mirage-mediation. The magnitudes of various SM Yukawa couplings point to a picture where scalar soft SUSY breaking terms are related to the geography of fields in the compactified dimensions. Higgs fields and third generation scalars extend to the bulk and occur in split multiplets with TeV scale soft masses. First and second generation scalars, localized at orbifold fixed points or tori with enhanced symmetry, occur in complete GUT multiplets and have much larger masses. This picture can be matched onto the parameter space of generalized mirage mediation. Naturalness considerations, the requirement of the observed electroweak symmetry breaking pattern, and LHC bounds on m(gluino) together limit the gravitino mass to the m_{3/2}~ 5-60 TeV range. The mirage unification scale is bounded from below with the limit depending on the ratio of squark to gravitino masses. We show that while natural SUSY in this realization may escape detection even at the high luminosity LHC, the high energy LHC with \sqrt{s}=33 TeV could unequivocally confirm or exclude this scenario. It should be possible to detect the expected light higgsinos at the ILC if these are kinematically accessible, and possibly also discriminate the expected compression of gaugino masses in the natural mini-landscape picture from the mass pattern expected in models with gaugino mass unification. The thermal WIMP signal should be accessible via direct detection searches at the multi-ton noble liquid detectors such as Xenon-nT or LZ.

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arXiv2017

Prospects for axion detection in natural SUSY with mixed axion-higgsino dark matter: back to invisible?

Under the expectation that nature is natural, we extend the Standard Model to include SUSY to stabilize the electroweak sector and PQ symmetry to stabilize the QCD sector. Then natural SUSY arises from a Kim-Nilles solution to the SUSY mu problem which allows for a little hierarchy where mu ~ f_a^2/M_P ~ 100-300 GeV while the SUSY particle mass scale m(SUSY)~ 1-10 TeV >> mu. Dark matter then consists of two particles: a higgsino-like WIMP and a SUSY DFSZ axion. The range of allowed axion mass values m(axion) depends on the mixed axion-higgsino relic density. The range of m(axion) is actually restricted in this case by limits on WIMPs from direct and indirect detection experiments. We plot the expected axion detection rate at microwave cavity experiments. The axion-photon-photon coupling is severely diminished by charged higgsino contributions to the anomalous coupling. In this case, the axion may retreat, at least temporarily, back into the regime of near invisibility. From our results, we urge new ideas for techniques which probe both deeper and more broadly into axion coupling versus axion mass parameter space.

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arXiv2017

The Potential of the ILC for Discovering New Particles

This paper addresses the question of whether the International Linear Collider has the capability of discovering new particles that have not already been discovered at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. We summarize the various paths to discovery offered by the ILC, and discuss them in the context of three different scenarios: 1. LHC does not discover any new particles, 2. LHC discovers some new low mass states and 3. LHC discovers new heavy particles. We will show that in each case, ILC plays a critical role in discovery of new phenomena and in pushing forward the frontiers of high-energy physics as well as our understanding of the universe in a manner which is highly complementary to that of LHC. For the busy reader, a two-page executive summary is provided at the beginning of the document.

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arXiv2017

Natural generalized mirage mediation

In the supersymmetric scenario known as mirage mediation (MM), the soft SUSY breaking terms receive comparable anomaly-mediation and moduli-mediation contributions leading to the phenomenon of mirage unification. The simplest MM SUSY breaking models which are consistent with the measured Higgs mass and sparticle mass constraints are strongly disfavoured by fine-tuning considerations. However, while MM makes robust predictions for gaugino masses, the scalar sector is quite sensitive to specific mechanisms for moduli stabilization and potential uplifting. We suggest here a broader setup of generalized mirage mediation (GMM), where heretofore discrete parameters are allowed as continuous to better parametrize these other schemes. We find that natural SUSY spectra consistent with both the measured value of m(h). as well as LHC lower bounds on superpartner masses are then possible. We explicitly show that models generated from natural GMM may be beyond the reach of even high-luminosity LHC searches. In such a case, the proposed International Linear e^+e^- Collider (ILC) will be required for natural SUSY discovery via higgsino pair production reactions. We also outline prospects for detection of higgsino-like WIMPs from natural GMM.

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arXiv2017

Natural SUSY with a bino- or wino-like LSP

In natural SUSY models higgsinos are always light because μ^2 cannot be much larger than M_Z^2, while squarks and gluinos may be very heavy. Unless gluinos are discovered at LHC13, the commonly assumed unification of gaugino mass parameters will imply correspondingly heavy winos and binos, resulting in a higgsino-like LSP and small inter-higgsino mass splittings. The small visible energy release in higgsino decays makes their pair production difficult to detect at the LHC. Relaxing gaugino mass universality allows for relatively light winos and binos without violating LHC gluino mass bounds and without affecting naturalness. In the case where the bino mass M_1<~ μ, then one obtains a mixed bino-higgsino LSP with instead sizable w_1-z_1 and z_2-z_1 mass gaps. The thermal neutralino abundance can match the measured dark matter density in contrast to models with a higgsino-like LSP where WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) are underproduced by factors of 10-15. If instead M_2<~ μ, then one obtains a mixed wino-higgsino LSP with large z_2-z_1 but small w_1-z_1 mass gaps with still an under-abundance of thermally-produced WIMPs. Portions of the light wino parameter space may already be excluded by the IceCube upper bound on the spin-dependent neutralino-nucleon cross section. We discuss dark matter detection in other direct and indirect detection experiments and caution that the bounds from these must be interpreted with care. Finally, we show that LHC13 experiments should be able to probe these non-universal mass scenarios via a variety of channels including multi-lepton + etmiss events, WZ+etmiss events, Wh+etmiss events and W^\pm W^\pm +etmiss events from electroweak chargino and neutralino production.

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arXiv2016

Affleck-Dine Leptogenesis with Varying Peccei-Quinn Scale

The Affleck-Dine leptogenesis scenario along the LHu flat direction is reconsidered. It is known that successful Affleck-Dine leptogenesis requires that the lightest neutrino mass is extremely small. This situation can be significantly relaxed if the neutrino mass in the early universe is different from the present one. We consider a supersymmetric Dine-Fischler-Srednicki-Zhitnitsky (DFSZ) type model, which provides a solution to the strong CP problem and generates a SUSY mu-term and right-handed neutrino masses. If the PQ scale during lepton number generation is much larger than the present value, leptogenesis is very efficient so that enough baryon number can be generated without introducing a hierarchically small neutrino mass. The final baryon asymmetry is related to the mu-term, and hence linked to the level of electroweak fine-tuning. We also show the PQ breaking scalar dynamics that keeps a large PQ breaking scale during inflation and lepton number generation. The mu-term generating superpotential plays an important role for preserving the lepton asymmetry during saxion oscillation. In this scenario, the axion isocurvature perturbation is naturally suppressed.

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