Cornering gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking with quasi-stable sleptons at the Tevatron

Abstract

There are many theoretical reasons why heavy quasi-stable charged particles might exist. Pair production of such particles at the Tevatron can produce highly ionizing tracks (HITs) or fake muons. In gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking, sparticle production can lead to events with a pair of quasi-stable sleptons, a significant fraction of which will have the same electric charge. Depending on the production mechanism and the decay chain, they may also be accompanied by additional energetic leptons. We study the relative importance of the resulting signals for the Tevatron Run II. The relative fraction of same-sign tracks to other background-free signals is an important diagnostic tool in gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking that may provide information about mass splittings, tan(beta) and the number of messengers communicating supersymmetry breaking.