Stop and Sbottom Phenomenology in the MSSM

Abstract

The first chapter serves as an introduction to the MSSM. I briefly review the model and explain why stops and sbottoms provide an interesting playground for exploring and testing this model. In the second chapter I discuss stop and sbottom production at lepton colliders. I give the analytical formulae for the production cross sections at e+e- and mu+mu- colliders including (general) beam polarization. A numerical analysis shows the cross sections that can be expected at LEP2, an e+e- Linear Collider, and a Muon Collider. In particular, I address the topics of what can be gained by using polarized beams and how one can determine the MSSM parameters by cross section measurements. The third chapter is devoted to stop and sbottom decays including 1-loop SUSY-QCD corrections. The calculations are done in the on-shell renormalization scheme using dimensional reduction. I present the analytical formulae for the \order(alpha_s) corrected decay widths and explain the subtleties that have to be taken into account in the calculations. Moreover, I perform a detailed numerical analysis of squark decay widths and branching ratios at tree level and \order(alpha_s).