Paper detail

Quirks in supersymmetry with gauge coupling unification

I investigate the phenomenology of supersymmetric models with extra vector-like supermultiplets that couple to the Standard Model gauge fields and transform as the fundamental representation of a new confining non-Abelian gauge interaction. If perturbative gauge coupling unification is to be maintained, the new group can be SU(2), SU(3), or SO(3). The impact on the sparticle mass spectrum is explored, with particular attention to the gaugino mass dominated limit in which the supersymmetric flavor problem is naturally solved. The new confinement length scale is astronomical for SO(3), so the new particles are essentially free. For the SU(2) and SU(3) cases, the new vector-like fermions are quirks; pair production at colliders yields quirk-antiquirk states bound by stable flux tubes that are microscopic but long compared to the new confinement scale. I study the reach of the Tevatron and LHC for the optimistic case that in a significant fraction of events the quirk-antiquirk bound state will lose most of its energy before annihilating as quirkonium.