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There are lots of models of gravity-mediated SUSY breaking with various spectra as well as various general gauge mediation models. Are there any "smoking gun" experimental signatures that could distinguish between the two scenarios? Would this be possible to do at the LHC or would we need an ILC-type machine to do that?

golden_hawk21
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stringpheno
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1 Answers1

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I believe that the simplest "smoking gun" experimental distinction between gravity- and gauge-mediation is that the former predicts that the lightest supersymmetric particle is a spin 1/2 neutralino while the latter predicts it is the spin 3/2 gravitino. Although conceptually simple, this could be challenging experimentally, e.g. if the lifetime of the Next-to-Lightest Supersymmetric Particle (NLSP) that decays into a gravitino is so long that we never see it decay and can't be sure if it is the NLSP or LSP.

When this Physics SE question was asked many years ago, the Higgs had not yet been discovered and it was plausible that SUSY might soon be discovered at the LHC and that there would eventually be sufficient LHC data on mass hierarchies, angular correlations, and other SUSY event characteristics to constrain how SUSY-breaking is mediated. We might still get lucky and make the initial discovery of some new physics beyond the Standard Model at the LHC, but it is very unlikely that the LHC could then provide enough data to pin down the details. A new machine such as an International Linear Collider (ILC) or a Future Circular Collider (FCC) would be needed for that.

David Bailey
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