Novel gluino cascade decays in E6 inspired models

Abstract

We point out that the extra neutralinos and charginos, generically appearing in a large class of $E_6$ inspired models, lead to distinctive signatures from gluino cascade decays involving longer decay chains, more visible transverse energy, softer jets and leptons and less missing transverse energy than in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM). On the one hand, this makes the gluino harder to discover for certain types of conventional analysis. On the other hand, the $E_6$ inspired models have enhanced 3- and 4-lepton signatures, as compared to the MSSM, making the gluino more visible in these channels. After extensive scans over the parameter space, we focus on representative benchmark points for the two models, and perform a detailed Monte Carlo analysis of the 3-lepton channel, showing that $E_6$ inspired models are clearly distinguishable from the MSSM in gluino cascade decays.