Squark and Gluino Production at Hadron Colliders

Abstract

We have determined the theoretical predictions for the cross-sections of squark and gluino production at $\ppb$ and $pp$ colliders (Tevatron and LHC) in next-to-leading order of supersymmetric QCD. By reducing the dependence on the renormalization/factorization scale considerably, the theoretically predicted values for the cross-sections are much more stable if these higher-order corrections are implemented. If squarks and gluinos are discovered, this improved stability translates into a reduced error on the masses, as extracted experimentally from the size of the production cross-sections. The cross-sections increase significantly if the next-to-leading order corrections are included at a renormalization/factorization scale near the average mass of the produced massive particles. This rise results in improved lower bounds on squark and gluino masses. By contrast, the shape of the transverse-momentum and rapidity distributions remains nearly unchanged when the next-to-leading order corrections are included.