Search strategy for gluinos at the LHC with a Higgs boson decaying into tau leptons

Abstract

Abstract The possibility in supersymmetric scenarios that the dark matter candidate is a Higgsino-like neutralino means that its production can be associated with Higgs bosons. Taking advantage of this fact, we propose a LHC search strategy for gluinos with $$\tau $$ τ leptons in the final state, coming from the decay of a Higgs boson. We consider the strong production of a pair of gluinos, one of which decays into the Higgsino plus jets while the other decays into the bino plus jets. In turn, this bino decays into the Higgsino plus a Higgs boson which finally decays into a $$\tau $$ τ -lepton pair. Therefore, the experimental signature under study consists of 4 jets, 2 $$\tau $$ τ leptons, and a large amount of missing transverse energy. This work represents a proof of principle of a search that is sensitive to a spectrum such that the gluino does not directly decay to the dark matter candidate but to an intermediate electroweakino that then produces Higgs bosons in its subsequent decay. Our cut-based search strategy allows us to reach, for a LHC center-of-mass energy of 14 TeV and a total integrated luminosity of 1 ab $$^{-1}$$ - 1 , significances of up to 2 standard deviations, considering systematic uncertainties in the SM background of 30%. The projections for 3 ab $$^{-1}$$ - 1 are encouraging, with significances at the evidence level, which in more optimistic experimental scenarios could exceed 4 standard deviations.