Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 131801 (2014)

So far, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has come up with no evidence for supersymmetry (SUSY) — and SUSY is running out of places to hide. SUSY implies that for every particle in the standard model, there exists a partner 'superparticle'. Although the so-called minimal supersymmetric standard model is now severely constrained, there are other ways to include SUSY in our particle theories: Csaba Csáki and colleagues suggest factoring in 'dynamical R-parity violation'.

R-parity violation (RPV) — allowing superparticles to decay to particles — has often been considered in SUSY scenarios; however, the lack of experimental proof means that RPV must be highly suppressed. But Csáki et al. postulate a more nuanced implementation, with RPV broken dynamically (in a 'hidden' sector) and also related to the breaking of SUSY itself.

Consequences include some interesting experimental signatures, although these depend on which superparticle is the lightest one: if the stop (the partner of the top quark) is the lightest, the signal would be two pairs of bottom quarks, with the vertex of each pair's trajectories displaced from the LHC interaction point; or if it's a sneutrino (a neutrino partner), four displaced top quarks should be sought instead.