Standard Model vs Supersymmetry

The Standard Model of particle physics, finalised in the mid-1970s and confirmed by the 2012 Higgs discovery, contains 17 fundamental particles: 6 quarks, 6 leptons, 4 gauge bosons (photon, W±, Z, gluon), and the Higgs boson. Three forces (electromagnetic, weak, strong) are described by gauge symmetries SU(3)×SU(2)×U(1).

Supersymmetry (SUSY) postulates that every Standard Model particle has a heavier "superpartner" with opposite spin statistics: squarks for quarks, sleptons for leptons, photinos and gluinos for gauge bosons, and so on. SUSY would address the hierarchy problem, provide a dark-matter candidate (lightest superpartner), and unify gauge couplings near 10¹⁶ GeV.

As of 2024, ATLAS and CMS searches at the LHC have placed stringent limits but found no direct evidence for SUSY at electroweak energies. Whether SUSY exists at higher scales is one of the major open questions.

Recent research on this topic from arXiv

Preprints and papers indexed on arXiv.org. Links open the public abstract pages.

• Supersymmetry
  Dirk Zerwas · 2009 · arXiv:0906.4632v1
  The determination of supersymmetric parameters at the LHC in favorable as well as difficult scenarios is presented. If discovered and measured at the LHC and the ILC, supersymmetry may provide a link between collider physics and cosmology.
• Measuring Supersymmetry
  Dirk Zerwas · 2010 · arXiv:1007.1321v1
  Supersymmetry is an attractive extension of the standard model of particle physics. It associates to every bosonic degree of freedom a fermionic one and vice versa. Supersymmetry unifies the coupling constants of the electromagnetic, weak a...
• Supersymmetry and LHC
  A. V. Gladyshev, D. I. Kazakov · 2006 · arXiv:0606288v1
  The motivation for introduction of supersymmetry in high energy physics as well as a possibility for supersymmetry discovery at LHC (Large Hadronic Collider) are discussed. The main notions of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM...
• Prospects for Discovering Supersymmetry at the LHC
  John Ellis · 2008 · arXiv:0810.1178v1
  Supersymmetry is one of the best-motivated candidates for physics beyond the Standard Model that might be discovered at the LHC. There are many reasons to expect that it may appear at the TeV scale, in particular because it provides a natur...

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