Non-Universal Gaugino Masses and the Fate of mu -> e gamma

Abstract

We study charged lepton flavor violating processes in the context of supersymmetric models with non-universal gaugino masses. We consider the generic case of free gaugino masses, as well as specific models based on gaugino mediation and SU(5) GUTs. Under the assumption that the main source of lepton flavor violation resides in the off-diagonal elements of the left handed slepton mass matrix, we show that BR(mu->e gamma) strongly depends on gaugino non-universality. When M_1 and M_2 have opposite signs, cancellations occurring between the neutralino and the chargino contributions can suppress, even completely, the branching ratio of charged lepton flavor violating decays. Moreover, we find that for M_3> M_2,M_1, BR(mu->e gamma) is an increasing function of M_3.