Neutralino Decays at the CERN LHC

Abstract

We study the distribution of lepton pairs from the second lightest neutralino decay \tchi^0_2\to\tchi^0_1 l^+l^-. This decay mode is important to measure the mass difference between \tchi^0_2 and the lightest neutralino \tchi^0_1, which helps to determine the parameters of the minimal supersymmetric standard model at the CERN LHC. We found that the decay distribution strongly depends on the values of underlying MSSM parameters. For some extreme cases, the amplitude near the end point of the lepton invariant mass distribution can be suppressed so strongly that one needs the information of the whole m_{ll} distribution to extract m_{\tchi^0_2}-m_{\tchi^0_1}. On the other hand, if systematic errors on the acceptance can be controlled, this distribution can be used to constrain slepton masses and the Z\tchi^0_2\tchi^0_1 coupling. Measurements of the velocity distribution of \tchi^0_2 from samples near the end point of the m_{ll} distribution, and of the asymmetry of the p_T of leptons, would be useful to reduce the systematic errors.