The Higgs and Supersymmetry at Run II of the LHC

Prof. David Shih was supported by DOE grant DE-SC0013678 from April 2015 to April 2016. His research during this year focused on the phenomenology of super- symmetry (SUSY) and maximizing its future discovery potential at Run II of the LHC. SUSY is one of the most well-motivated frameworks for physics beyond the Standard Model. It solves the \naturalness" or \hierarchy" problem by stabilizing the Higgs mass against otherwise uncontrolled quantum corrections, predicts \grand uni cation" of the fundamental forces, and provides many potential candidates for dark matter. However, after decades of null results from direct and indirect searches, the viable parameter space for SUSY is increasingly constrained. Also, the discovery of a Standard Model-like Higgs with a mass at 125 GeV places a stringent constraint on SUSY models. In the work supported on this grant, Shih has worked on four di erent projects motivated by these issues. He has built natural SUSY models that explain the Higgs mass and provide viable dark matter; he has studied the parameter space of \gauge mediated supersymmetry breaking" (GMSB) that satis es the Higgs mass constraint; he has developed new tools for the precision calculation of avor and CP observables in general SUSY models;more » and he has studied new techniques for discovery of supersymmetric partners of the top quark.« less