rationalskepticism.org

Signatures of Supersymmetry in Neutrino Telescopes

P. S. Bhupal Dev
(Submitted on 5 Jun 2019)

We review the prospects of probing R-parity violating Supersymmetry (RPV SUSY) at neutrino telescopes using some of the highest energy particles given to us by Nature. The presence of RPV interactions involving ultra-high energy neutrinos with Earth-matter can lead to resonant production of TeV-scale SUSY partners of the SM quarks and leptons (squarks and sleptons), thereby giving rise to potentially anomalous behavior in the event spectrum observed by large-volume neutrino detectors, such as IceCube, as well as balloon-borne cosmic ray experiments, such as ANITA. Using the ultra-high energy neutrino events observed recently at IceCube, with the fact that for a given power-law flux of astrophysical neutrinos, there is no statistically significant deviation in the current data from the Standard Model expectations, we derive robust upper limits on the RPV couplings as a function of the resonantly-produced squark mass, independent of the other unknown model parameters, as long as the squarks decay dominantly to two-body final states involving leptons and quarks through the RPV couplings. Also, we discuss RPV SUSY interpretations of the recent anomalous, upward-going EeV air showers observed at ANITA, in terms of long-lived charged or neutral next-to-lightest SUSY particles.