High Energy Seminar

A Solution to the Supersymmetric Flavor Problem and its Experimental Signatures

Dr. David Morrissey
University of Michigan

Tuesday, September 5, 2006    4:00 p.m. NSH 415

Supersymmetry is a well-motivated way to extend the Standard Model. It can explain why the electroweak scale is so much smaller than the Planck scale, it leads to gauge unification, and it contains an excellent dark matter dandidate in the lightest superpartner particle. However, many supersymmetric models contain new sources of flavor mixing, often at levels much larger than are observed. In this talk we discuss a class of supersymmetric models that avoid this flavor problem by generating the soft supersymmetry spectrum primarily through the gaugino masses. A common feature of these models is that many of the scalar leptons are relatively light. This leads to potential signals in both direct and indirect dark matter experiments, as well as a distinctive set of signatures at the Tevatron and the LHC.