Unravelling the sbottom spin at the CERN LHC

Abstract

Establishing that a signal of new physics is undoubtly supersymmetric requires not only the discovery of the supersymmetric partners but also probing their spins and couplings. We show that the sbottom spin can be probed at the CERN Large Hadron Collider using only angular correlations in sbottom pair production with subsequent decay of sbottoms into bottom quark plus the lightest neutralino, which allow us to distinguish a universal extra dimensional interpretation with a fermionic heavy bottom quark from supersymmetry with a bosonic bottom squark. We demonstrate that this channel provides a clear indication of the sbottom spin provided the sbottom production rate and branching ratio into bottom quark plus the lightest neutralino are sufficiently large to have a clear signal above Standard Model backgrounds.