Associated production of sfermions and gauginos at high-energy $e^+e^-$ colliders

Abstract

In the context of the Minimal Supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model, we analyze the production at future high-energy $e^+e^-$ colliders of second and third generation scalar leptons as well as scalar quarks in association with neutralinos and charginos, $e^+e^-\to f\tilde{f}\chi$. In the case of third generation squarks, we also discuss the associated production with gluinos. We show that the cross sections for some of these three-body final state processes could be significant enough to allow for the detection of scalar fermions with masses above the kinematical two--body threshold, $\sqrt{s}= 2m_{\tilde{f}}$. We then discuss, taking as a reference example the case of scalar muons, the production cross sections in various approximations and make a comparison with the full four-body production process, $e^+e^- \to f\bar{f} \chi \chi$, in particular around the two-sfermion threshold.