title: Light nondegenerate squarks at the LHC.
abstract: Experimental bounds on squarks of the first two generations assume their masses to be eightfold degenerate and consequently constrain them to be heavier than ∼1.4  TeV when the gluino is lighter than 2.5 TeV. The assumption of squark-mass universality is neither a direct consequence of minimal flavor violation (MFV), which allows for splittings within squark generations, nor a prediction of supersymmetric alignment models, which allow for splittings between generations. We reinterpret a recent CMS multijet plus missing energy search allowing for deviations from U(2) universality and find significantly weakened squark bounds: A 400 GeV second-generation squark singlet is allowed, even with exclusive decays to a massless neutralino, and, in an MFV scenario, the down-type squark singlets can be as light as 600 GeV, provided the up-type singlets are pushed up to 1.8 TeV, for a 1.5 TeV gluino and decoupled doublet squarks.
authors.affiliation: Theory Division, CERN, 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Rakhi
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Mahbubani
authors.affiliation: Theoretical Physics Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley California 94720, USA and Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley California 94720, USA.
authors.forename: Michele
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Papucci
authors.affiliation: Theory Division, CERN, 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland and Department of Particle Physics and Astrophysics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel.
authors.forename: Gilad
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Perez
authors.affiliation: Theoretical Physics Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley California 94720, USA and Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley California 94720, USA.
authors.forename: Joshua T
authors.initials: JT
authors.lastname: Ruderman
authors.affiliation: DESY, Notkestrasse 85, D-22607 Hamburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Weiler