Paper detail

Leptonic signatures for SUSY at the LHC

Most models of weak scale supersymmetry (SUSY) predict observable rates for production of SUSY matter at the CERN LHC. The SUSY collider events are expected to be rich in jets, isolated (and non-isolated) leptons and missing E_T. After first discussing the merits of mixed axion/axino vs. neutralino cold dark matter in SUSY models, I then survey prospects for detecting SUSY matter at the LHC via leptonic signatures. In the paradigm mSUGRA model, cascade decays of gluinos and squarks should yield high rates for multi-jet plus multi-lepton events, allowing values of m_{\tg}\sim 3 (1.8) TeV to be probed for m_{\tq}\simeq m_{\tg} (m_{\tq}\gg m_{\tg}) with 100 fb^{-1} of integrated luminosity. Direct production of gauginos and sleptons should also be possible in limited regions of parameter space. Even in the first year of LHC running, observable signals in multi-muon plus jets channel (without cutting on missing E_T) can occur for interesting ranges of parameters. The highly motivated Yukawa unified SUSY models-- where the dark matter is expected to be of mixed axion/axino type-- should likely be testable in the first year of LHC running due to large rates for gluino pair production followed by cascade decays.