https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-016-3969-0
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Long-lived colored scalars at the LHC
1
Department of Physics, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6, Canada
2
Theory Department, TRIUMF, 4004 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada
3
IFLP, CONICET-Dpto. de Física, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, C.C. 67, 1900, La Plata, Argentina
* e-mail: apuente@physics.carleton.ca
Received:
25
January
2016
Accepted:
21
February
2016
Published online:
7
March
2016
We study the collider signatures of a long-lived massive colored scalar transforming trivially under the weak interaction and decaying within the inner sections of a detector such as ATLAS or CMS. In our study, we assume that the colored scalar couples at tree-level to a top quark and a stable fermion, possibly arising from a dark sector or from supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model. After implementing the latest experimental searches for long-lived colored scalars, we observe a region of parameter space consistent with a colored electroweak-singlet scalar with mass between 
–350 GeV and a lifetime between 0.1–1 
together, with a nearly degenerate dark fermion that may be probed at the 
TeV LHC. We show that a search strategy using a combination of cuts on missing transverse energy and impact parameters can exclude regions of parameter space not accessed by prompt searches. We show that a region of parameter space within our simplified model may naturally arise from the light-stop window regime of supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model, where a light mostly right-handed stop has a mass slightly larger than the lightest neutralino and decays through a four-body process.
© The Author(s), 2016
